Thursday, September 17, 2009

Silverlight weaknesses

Trust the Q&A session to bring weaknesses to light. Silverlight does not have these features, which are supported by Adobe Flash Player and/or AIR:
  • Webcam
  • Programmatic clipboard copy & paste
  • Native printing API

Labels:

Silverlight out of the browser

Many of the features of Silverlight are nearly identical to Flash Player 10: HD video support, streaming, pixel bending, etc. etc. One big difference though is the implementation of 'out of the browser' support - the equivalent of AIR.

Silverlight apps on the desktop run within a sandbox - I don't know how restrictive it is, but as a result the local installation doesn't have to present any scary security warnings. There's clearly a tradeoff - the broad system access that Adobe AIR apps wouldn't be possible - but user acceptance levels might be much greater.

Labels: ,

Silverlight Firestarter

I'm reporting today from the Microsoft campus in Redmond. OK, this is odd - I've NEVER BEEN HERE BEFORE. After 20 years or so in tech, this is the first visit to the beast.

Today's event is a 1-day conference-style collection of presentations on Silverlight - the player, development tools, etc. The first speaker is Mithun Dhar, sort of the Ben Forta of Silverlight. More to come. Right now we're just dealing with coffee & pastries.

Labels: