With Adobe AIR out, Microsoft readies Silverlight 2

Adobe on Monday released the long-awaited AIR download for running Web applications offline, but Microsoft is readying an update to its Silverlight platform that it hopes will keep Web developers in its camp.

Microsoft will release the first beta of Silverlight 2 "shortly," said Scott Guthrie, a general manager in Microsoft's developer division in charge of Web development, in his blog on Friday. Next week, the company is hosting its Mix '08 Web development and design conference in Las Vegas.

Silverlight 2 is a significant upgrade to the existing edition because it's designed to let programmers write rich Internet applications for Windows and Macintosh browsers using Microsoft's popular .Net tools.

The area of rich Internet applications is fast becoming one of the most hotly contested among infrastructure software providers.

There a handful of emerging platforms that look to bring the features associated with desktop applications, such as offline access to data, to the Web.

In addition to Adobe AIR, there is Google Gears for offline access as well as JavaFX and the Mozilla Foundation's Prism project.

Guthrie said that Silverlight 2 has a stripped-down version of the .Net Framework that lets people use many different languages to write for the Web. These applications can run in Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Apple's Safari browser.

"Developers can write Silverlight applications using any .NET language (including VB, C#, JavaScript, IronPython and IronRuby). We will ship Visual Studio 2008 and Expression Studio tool support that enables great developer/designer work flow and integration when building Silverlight applications," he wrote.

Microsoft hopes to exploit its strengths and developer tools as it battles Adobe and others for developer attention. Developers can use standard Ajax toolkits or Adobe's Flex, which is now open source, to write AIR applications.

Silverlight is now available on Windows or Mac browser but Microsoft said that it intends to have versions for Linux desktops and mobile devices.

[kelmon]

No Mac Dev Tools = No Use

Call me paranoid but I'm not having anything to do with Silverlight
until Microsoft releases developer tools for other platforms other
than Windows. If they intend Silverlight to be a suitable competitor
to Adobe's Flash technology, which is truly cross-platform, then
they need to release the developer tools for those other platforms.
Given past experience I wouldn't be surprised to see Microsoft drop
support for other platforms for the client if it manages suitable
market penetration in order to keep people on Windows.

[R. U. Sirius]

Silverlight is another trojan horse

It's designed to lock people into Windows.

[mknopp]

Which is why the are behind

The same old strategy isn't working in politics and it isn't working for Microsoft.

They are trying to become more open, but just keep slipping back into their same old routines. More and more people, especially programmers, are moving to OSes other then Windows. So, requiring Windows (Visual Studio) to program for Silverlight is going to limit the actual uptake.

I would give them a C for effort, but they have a lot of work to do.

[BlueLaser]

Missing the point

I don't know if I'd call you paranoid, but I may call you uneducated. There are hundreds of thousands of .NET developers around the world that Silverlight will appeal to as a platform, much more than the Flash platform for developing -applications- (vs. animations). For whatever else you may say about Microsoft, they are far and way the leader in developer tools with the Visual Studio IDE, and that's an area Adobe has a long way to go to catch-up.

Furthermore, Silverlight is quietly ushering in the age of cross-platform (Windows, OS X, Linux) .NET framework. It's not unlikely that we'll see the full .NET framework ported to these other platforms in the coming years, at which point almost any .NET application could run on almost any computer. That's hardly what I consider "no use."

[jltnol]

not so sure about "web apps" in general...

Yeah yeah yeah..

EVERYONE says it's the "next big thing", but I'm not so sure. If/When we all have superfast
internet access, which, seems years away, and we can UPLOAD almost as fast as we can
download, then, yeah... perhaps.

I just think there are far too many different kinds of apps to make this very effective. Besides,
why would I want to "rent" an app that I have to pay for month after month, or year after year
just to have access to thu the web, when I can buy it now, own and use it basically forever for
one price?

[Gunady]

Unbelievable

We are (or already) shifting from the desktop oriented application to web application, and you're still arguing about the significant of web application. Software is not all about paid product, there're a lot of other so called (free) services, like most of social networking, which is quite difficult to achieve in the old desktop only environment.

[FredatMicrosoft]

RE:

If you're interested in getting more info on ASP.NET under Visual Studio 2008, be sure to check out the Heroes Happen Here launch events around the US. There'll be experts on hand to answer questions and you'll get a free version of VS 2008 by attending.

---------------------------------
Fred Reckling
Microsoft 2008 Joint Launch Team
http://www.microsoft.com/2008jointlaunch/