Filed under: Software
Your browser's next plugin: Silverlight?
At this year's NAB, Microsoft has revealed Silverlight (né Windows Presentation Foundation Everywhere, WPF/E), its new cross-browser, cross-platform video plug-in. This new plug-in supports Safari and Firefox as well as MSIE and was written using .NET technology.
TUAW reader Neil points out that this means that at least some of the .NET framework must have now been ported over to the Mac. You can read more about the introductory post here on Tim Senath's Microsoft blog and Neil's .Net on Mac analysis here.
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
tim said 2:42PM on 4-19-2007
didnt they already come out with a flash competitor a few years ago? i cant even remember the name of it, i guess that means SOMETHING about it ;-)
i havent read more details about it, so i cant say much right now, but im sure it has its strong points, but theyll manage to ruin it somehow, making it not compete with QT/flash
Reply
Quix said 2:58PM on 4-19-2007
No thank you. Microsoft has proven over the years its blatant disdain for cross-platform compatibility. They'll give us a Mac version of Silverlight while they try to attain dominance, then once in the driver's seat (if ever), we'd see the Mac version start to slip in functionality, until Microsoft dropped it completely (IE for Mac, Windows Media Player for Mac). Then we'd be right back to "Viewing this site requires Windows IE 7." No thanks.
Fortunately, I think Microsoft's days of being able to bully the Internet are over, or are at least coming to an end. And that's a good thing for everyone.
Reply
Brian said 3:03PM on 4-19-2007
Oh lord, anything but .Net
When I used windows I could hardly comprehend how terrible it was. Now, how bad could they possibly make a ported version of it?
Never will this touch my MacBook
Reply
Brady J. Frey said 3:21PM on 4-19-2007
.NET is trash, and Microsoft can't even support the industry standard languages of web development properly, much less introduce a new plugin. Adoption of this will require the open arms of web developers, and none of us are that interested since MS has mistreated us since the introduction of IE6.
Netflix maybe posing interest, but their needs are misguided: they want DRM video, and without iTunes, they're leaning on MS. I say if Netflix keeps leaning this route they're already on a death kneel; I left Blockbuster because of it's restrictions, I have no need to adopt more than I already have to tolerate.
Reply
Brady J. Frey said 3:22PM on 4-19-2007
..and besides, it's XAML - MS's XML that's tied to a platform. Another blow to our community.
Reply
matthew said 6:32PM on 4-19-2007
Maybe if they put up a real challenge for Adobe, we'll see better releases of Flash. Flash is a slow POS on the Mac right now, and if some competition from MS would help improve that then I'm all for it.
Reply
Dan Riley said 7:03PM on 4-19-2007
If Apple would have allowed all comers to use their DRM,
then we wouldn't have this problem. Many people would love to use
something other than this or Microsoft's current player that isn't
cross platform and could have potentially gone with Quicktime
with DRM like iTunes movies are, but NO, Apple won't let anyone
else use it, so here's what you get. Everyone with a video to sell
can't get on iTunes, only big guys. So if I want to sell my video
for $1.99 with some kind of DRM, you can't use Apple to do it.
It's not the market's fault there is a vacuum that Microsoft and
Adobe (with their new player) are filling, it's Apple's fault for
not filling it themselves.
Dan
Reply
GQmacguy said 12:26AM on 4-20-2007
Well after trying to get it to work multiple times, I still can't get the demo movie to play. Oh well, guess it's not worth it. Already cleared all traces of it off my mac.
Reply
Greg said 9:38AM on 4-20-2007
In the article it states "TUAW reader Neil points out that this means that at least some of the .NET framework must have now been ported over to the Mac." as if this were not an openly known fact. Actually, almost all of .Net 2.0 (they're already working on 3.0) and specifically the C# programming language have been ported for full cross platform by the Novell/Microsoft open source project Mono: http://www.mono-project.com M$ bashing aside, this is actually starting to be a viable cross-platform development system to rival definitely things like wxPython and Java Swing, or even QT. I would really suggest any interested people try it out. Their mac tools are great - you can get full access to the Cocoa api's and build fully native interfaces in INterface Builder, with the program logic written in C#.
Reply
zer0her0 said 10:34AM on 4-20-2007
Now that all the wailing and hand wringing is done, has anyone tried this? I installed it on a Mac OS 10.4 test box and downloaded the samples and can't get a single one to load in either FF or Safari.
Reply
Ron said 11:02PM on 5-01-2007
I tried it, and it seems to work well and the picture quality is good...
It is still in beta, and you have to give it a bit of slack...
We should applaud Microsoft for thinking of the Mac and putting resources into it.
http://www.microsoft.com/SILVERLIGHT/
Reply