Beyond Binary

The developer of the Moonlight software that enables Silverlight applications to run on Linux computers said on Monday that he is ready to start publicly beta testing an update to the software.

In a blog posting, Miguel de Icaza said the beta of Moonlight 2.0 is available from the gomono.com Web site.

Moonlight 2.0 is aimed at achieving compatibility with sites written for Silverlight 2.0, but incorporates the media pipeline and a few other features of Silverlight 3.0, de Icaza said. Microsoft released Silverlight 3.0 last month.

The beta is available both as source code and as a plug in for the Mozilla browser.

Work on Moonlight first started in 2007, with a beta of the original version released late last year and the final version released in February.

SAN FRANCISCO--By next year, half of all devices connected to the Internet will have Silverlight, says Microsoft's Walid Abu-Hadba.

That will still be just a fraction of the number of phones and computers that have a version of Adobe's Flash, but Abu-Hadba said that it will be enough to really start changing the mindset of those who create content for the Web.

Abu-Hadba

(Credit: Microsoft)

"It's a totally different game," said, Abu-Hadba, who leads Microsoft's developer and platform evangelism efforts. Abu-Hadba noted that Microsoft now has a set of features that can appeal to both those streaming large-scale Web video content, as well as software developers aiming to create programs that run inside of businesses.

His comments came following Microsoft's launch Friday of Silverlight 3, the latest version of its technology for rich media applications. The new version allows for programs that work in and out of the browser, supports up to 1080p streaming, and lets users pause and rewind a live video stream.

One of the areas where Microsoft still has work to do is on the phone side. Microsoft has long talked about offering Silverlight on phones, even hoping to bring it to Apple's iPhone, but today it is not commercially available for any phone.

"It's taken a little bit longer than we would have wanted, absolutely," said Abu-Hadba.

However, Abu-Hadba and fellow developer unit executive Scott Guthrie say that Microsoft has also taken the approach that it wants the Silverlight experience on the phone to match that offered on the PC, as opposed to having different versions as Adobe does with Flash. Also, Guthrie said, the landscape for the phone has changed dramatically, with more phones adding the kind of graphics chips necessary to do hardware-based acceleration.

"We want to make sure people have a 'wow' experience," Guthrie said.

Microsoft is beta testing its phone software for both Android and Windows Mobile and announcements are expected at this fall's Professional Developer Conference in Los Angeles.

"You are going to hear a lot more details about it later this year," Guthrie said. (For more on Guthrie's take on Silverlight 3, check out the video embedded below.)

For his part, Abu-Hadba said he doesn't wonder if Silverlight will be around 10 years from now, but rather whether his rival will. He said that Adobe has committed itself to moving from a design-oriented company to one that aims to offer a general purpose Web platform, something he said the company doesn't have the resources or experiences to make happen.

"I don't believe they have the assets or the organizational structure," he said. "That's what we do for a living at Microsoft."

Abu-Hadba said Adobe would be better off picking a specialty and sticking to it.

"I don't think they will exist in 10 years in the form they are today," he said. It's a bold statement, he agreed, but added how unthinkable it would have been to predict in 2000 that Sun Microsystems would go away.

I'm checking in with Adobe. I'm thinking it might have a somewhat different take on the subject.

Microsoft Senior VP S. Somasegar notes that the early posting of Silverlight 3 to the Web was an accident and not a "clever marketing ploy."

(Credit: Ina Fried/CNET)

SAN FRANCISCO--Microsoft kicked off its latest effort to challenge Adobe's Flash by launching Silverlight 3 at an event Friday.

The code actually made its debut a little early, hitting the Web on Thursday.

In his opening remarks on Friday, Microsoft Senior Vice President S. Somasegar made reference to Silverlight's premature release.

"I can tell you it wasn't a clever marketing ploy," Somegar said. "It was sort of a small mistake that somebody made and we decided to let it go."

Silverlight still has a long way to go to match Flash's ubiquity, with Adobe's technology found on nearly all PCs and a growing number of cell phones. Microsoft says Silverlight 2 is now on one in three Internet devices. That version launched nine months ago.

Silverlight has had a mixed record in its initial efforts to take streaming business from Adobe's Flash. It has scored key deals to power NBC's 2008 Summer and 2010 Winter Olympics sites.

It also won a deal to power Major League Baseball's Web site, but the league went back to Flash for the 2009 season, blaming stability and other issues, according to sources.

Among the new features in Silverlight 3 are the ability to create Silverlight applications that run outside the browser as well as support for a "smooth streaming" technology that allows video to be streamed at up to 1080p HDTV quality.

Microsoft announced a couple new customers for Silverlight on Friday including MGM which is using it to produce SGU: Stargate Universe site and Continental Airlines, which is remaking its reservation call-center application as a Silverlight application running via a Web browser. NBC also said it will use Silverlight for its high-quality video streaming across its sporting events.

As part of Friday's event, Microsoft also said version 3 of its Expression design tools will be available within the next 30 days. A release candidate version of one component, Expression Blend 3, was posted on Thursday to Microsoft's Web site.

The final version of Silverlight 3 has been released to the Web, a day ahead of the product's launch event in San Francisco.

The release, noted by enthusiast site Neowin, marks Microsoft's latest effort to take on Adobe's Flash.

Microsoft detailed Silverlight 3 at the Mix09 event in March, releasing a beta version of the software.

Among the product's new features is technology that allows the software to utilize a PC's hardware to accelerate graphics processing. It also allows for programs that run outside a browser on both the PC and Mac.

NBC has said it will use Silverlight to broadcast the 2010 Winter Olympics from Vancouver. The technology will allow the Games to be broadcast in 720p HD quality as well as provide a TiVo-like ability to pause and rewind a live stream.

Netflix said on Wednesday that the next version of Silverlight shows some promise in helping ease recent issues that some users have had while trying to stream videos on lower-end computers.

"There are test configurations in our lab where we are seeing an improvement," said Kevin McEntee, vice president of Web development for Netflix. McEntee told CNET News that the company went out and bought computers such as an Asus Netbook that users had said were causing problems. In some cases, the low-end machines weren't able to keep up with the video and were dropping frames, McEntee said.

The next version of Silverlight holds promise, McEntee said, by allowing the load to be shared by the graphics and main processors, whereas the current version puts all the strain on the CPU.

"There was a significant improvement using Silverlight 3," McEntee said. "We think we can run on a wide range of lower-end machines that we don't run (well) on today."

However, those experiencing problems will have to wait a bit. Silverlight 3 just entered beta, with a final release not expected until sometime before the end of the year. A Silverlight 3-based Netflix player would come sometime after that, he said.

"I don't anticipate we would do it until Silverlight 3 is released as a final (version)," he said.

McEntee said that Netflix originally planned to use Silverlight only to create a Mac version of its streaming player, but decided to shift entirely to Silverlight because it lets them offer a single player that works on multiple platforms and on multiple browsers.

The biggest downside, he said, is that many people still don't have Silverlight, meaning customers have to download the program before they can watch their first movie.

"We're waiting for Silverlight to have more and more penetration," McEntee said. "We would love to be able to have (customers) push the blue play button and it just plays."

For now, Netflix is focused on offering streaming video for the PC and television rather than actively working on an option that would also get the content onto cell phones and iPods.

"We don't have any imminent plans for phones or iPods or anything with a smaller screen," said company spokesman Steve Swasey. "At some point--and we haven't said when--we would be interested in getting into other devices."

Microsoft has had a mixed track record with big-name customers for Silverlight. NBC used Silverlight to offer on-demand and live video from the Beijing Olympics. On Wednesday, NBC's Perkins Miller announced at Mix that the network would also be using Microsoft's technology for the 2010 winter games in Vancouver.

Major League Baseball, meanwhile, recently said it was dropping Silverlight for its video service and going with Adobe's Flash.

Microsoft's Scott Guthrie on stage at Mix 09, detailing Silverlight 3.

(Credit: Ina Fried/CNET)

LAS VEGAS--After a design-focused beginning, the talk quickly turned techie here at the Mix 09 event once Microsoft corporate VP Scott Guthrie took the stage.

After announcing a few different Web tools (which I'll save for lower down), the discussion shifted to Silverlight and Silverlight 3. Guthrie noted that so far there have been 350 million installations of Silverlight and said Microsoft believes there are now 300,000 developers targeting Silverlight.

Among the new features of Silverlight 3 is the ability to tap a computer's graphics processor to offer hardware acceleration of the video (both PC and Mac). The company is expected to make the beta version of Silverlight 3 available later on Wednesday, with some pieces of the product already having made their way onto the Web. (Update: Microsoft has officially announced the beta of Silverlight 3.)

NBC's Perkins Miller also took the stage to announce that his network will be using Microsoft's Silverlight to offer 720p HD streaming of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. The technology will also allow pausing and rewinding of live TV, Miller said.

Before turning to the new version of Silverlight, Guthrie brought out Kevin McEntee vice president of Web Engineering for Netflix. McEntee noted that Netflix started considering Silverlight about a year ago as a way to add support for the Mac and for more browsers.

"Twenty percent of users that wanted to stream Netflix movies couldn't because we weren't on the Macintosh and we weren't on Firefox," McEntee said. In the end, Netflix went all Silverlight for its streaming player because it allowed them to use a single player that can work across multiple browsers and computers.

Another benefit, McEntee said, is the fact that the company doesn't need to do a new installer each time it updates its player. In the past, updates required users to re-install the Netflix application, something that 20 percent of users either could not or would not do. That kept the company from innovating, limiting updates to once a year.

"Every two weeks we are trying something new," McEntee said.

As for the other products, Microsoft announced a new version of its Expression Web tool that includes a "SuperPreview" feature that allows Web designers to see what their page looks like on a variety of browsers--even browsers that are on other platforms, by tapping into a cloud service. Microsoft also made a free standalone version of SuperPreview available to allow users to compare how Web pages render in the three latest versions of Internet Explorer--IE 6, IE 7, and IE 8.

Guthrie also announced a few new details on Windows Azure, reiterating that the final version of the Azure platform is due to launch before the end of 2009. Among the features being added is the inclusion of Fast CGI support, which means Azure will be capable of running PHP applications in addition to those written for Microsoft's .Net.

Update: Guthrie offered a few more details on Silverlight 3. The new version can be used to write programs that run outside the browser on both PCs and Macs. As for timing, Guthrie said the company plans for only a single beta. "We'll ship the final release later this year."

On the Mac front, Microsoft also said that developers will now be able to use Eclipse on Macs to develop Silverlight applications.

Bill Buxton addresses a crowd of Web designers and developers at the Mix 09 conference in Las Vegas.

(Credit: Ina Fried/CNET)

LAS VEGAS--To kick off its Mix conference, Microsoft went deep into its bench to find a speaker that could connect with the crowd of Web developers.

Rather than start with a product pitch, Microsoft began the event with a speech from Bill Buxton, a computing pioneer who these days focuses on design for Microsoft research.

Buxton's chat had a very un-Microsoft feel, as he ran back and forth on stage, gesturing wildly and speaking passionately about the need to create better experiences. Buxton encouraged the crowd not to get hung up on programming tools at first, but just sketch their ideas on paper.

"These things are far to important to take seriously," he said. "We need to be able to play."

That's not to say that Buxton wasn't there to tout Microsoft and its products. Indeed, Buxton talked about the growth of design within Microsoft, noting that the company has added user experience staff at twice the rate it is hiring technical people and now has about 800 designers and user experience researchers.

"We're walking the walk," Buxton said.

The product pitch is set to begin shortly, with Scott Guthrie expected to announce the beta of Silverlight 3, pieces of which started showing up on Microsoft's developer site earlier on Wednesday.

LAS VEGAS--Silverlight 3 just couldn't wait to make its appearance here in Vegas.

Microsoft is expected to demonstrate the software later on Wednesday, but pieces of the beta code have already started to make their way on to Microsoft's developer site. As noted by Ars Technica and others, the documentation for Silverlight 3 beta and other supporting bits of code are available on MSDN.

The new version of Microsoft's would-be rival to Adobe's Flash is expected to be a focal point of the first-day keynote here at Microsoft's Mix conference.

I'll be covering the morning keynote speeches from Scott Guthrie and Bill Buxton, and will likely have more to say on Silverlight 3 in just a little bit.