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April 15, 2007 9:01 PM PDT
Microsoft sheds light on Flash rival
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September 15, 2005
On Monday at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) Show in Las Vegas, Microsoft launched Silverlight, a Web browser plug-in for playing media files and displaying interactive Web applications.
The company intends to release a beta of Silverlight, formerly called Windows Presentation Foundation/Everywhere (WPF/E), at the Mix '07 conference for designers and Web developers in Las Vegas later this month.
Along with the public launch of Silverlight, Microsoft announced a number of media and advertising agency partners that have shown interest in using the software. Partners include Major League Baseball, online video broadcaster Brightcove, Netflix and Akamai Technologies.
Also at NAB, Microsoft introduced a digital content management tool called Interactive Media Manager. The company says the software works with its existing SharePoint Server product and is targeted at companies in media, entertainment, advertising and marketing. No price was announced.
Silverlight, which has been under development for at least two years, is a player that can display Web applications on both Windows and the Mac in Internet Explorer, Firefox or Safari. The download of the player will be less than 2 megabytes.
Like Flash, it has accompanying development tools for both designers and software developers.
By launching Silverlight at the NAB conference, Microsoft is trying to spark the interest of media companies moving online. The company's Windows Media Video format is widely used, particularly for downloads. But Adobe's Flash Player has become the dominant choice for streaming video used by high-volume sites such as MySpace.com and YouTube.
Brightcove, for example, displays all of its video using Flash, but the company intends to support Silverlight as an output format later this year to appeal to customers who have shown interest in it, said Adam Berrey, vice president of marketing and strategy at the company.
"The most significant thing about Silverlight is that it basically puts the...Windows Media Video format in the browser in a really seamless way," he said. "The reason we haven't supported Windows Media Video until now is because we felt that the user experience wasn't there."
Brightcove will continue to build all its software, including tools that enable content providers to upload video to the Brightcove service, using Adobe's Flash and Flex development tools, Berrey said.
Stealing the limelight from Adobe?
With the rapid rise of Web video, the competition between Microsoft and Adobe is set to intensify.
Microsoft has existing customers in the media industry looking to introduce more online content. It is also looking to move beyond its huge base of software programmers into the realm of graphics and Web designers. Adobe's products for creative professionals represent more than half the company's income.
For its part, Adobe is looking to marry Web development with content authoring. Its recently introduced Creative Suite 3 allows designers to publish content, such as photos and videos, in print, on the Web or mobile devices.
At the NAB Show, Adobe plans to announce the Adobe Media Player, formerly code-named Philo, free software for playing Flash format videos offline. Later in the year, the company plans to release Adobe Media Player, which will let a user pick and manage RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds of video podcasts.
Forest Key, director of product management in Microsoft's Server and Tools Division, said Silverlight will offer advantages over Flash. Windows that display streaming video within a browser page can be resized because Silverlight uses vector graphics, he said. Microsoft also will offer content publishers digital rights management tools.
In addition, developers familiar with Microsoft's .Net tools for writing Windows or Web applications can use their existing skills for online video.
Later in the second quarter, Microsoft plans to release its Expression suite of tools aimed at graphics designers and Web developers.
At the NAB show, the software giant intends to demonstrate its Expression Media Encoder, a tool for preparing existing Windows Media Video files for the Web.
The user interface design for Silverlight is written using a Microsoft-developed language called XAML.
See more CNET content tagged:
Microsoft Silverlight, Adobe Systems Inc., broadcaster, designer, development tool
118 comments
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Apples "iWeb" webpage builder ;-)
lock themselves to MS technology.
Also, what about Linux? Flash 9 exists even for Solaris x86.
able to say it works with other platforms like the Macintosh in
reality it will work "properly" or "full featured" only with Windows
I'm betting. Yet another trojan horse from the bowels of Redmond.
And from what I've read that industry is predominately Mac now, and Apple is gaining even more marketshare.
Could be a hard sell if it is Windows only.
The industry used to be *exclusively* Mac. It has shifted away from that to a mixed PC/Mac industry.
Of course, the industry you appear to hold high includes the likes of the RIAA and MPAA, so customer focussed may not be something they have yet subscribed to. RIP .
I only hope the video playback ability of this is better than Flash. I hate Flash video. I use high res monitors, and get tired of postage stamp sized videos on web pages. I don't mind pixelization, if at least I can view the video better than what I can in the tiny format they are usually in.
Then we have Flash sites. I SOOOOOO hate Flash, Authorware, or anything else resembling Flash...I've taken so many online courses for my business degree that used Flash that I'm about ready to throw some No Script and Flash Kill from the Firefox extensions site into my browser and deal with the resulting issues with my classes.
What I really hate the most about Adobe products is that they WILL not unload once in RAM w/o going into Task Manager and killing them. Hell, even Outlook with my 1.2GB mail file loads and unloads faster than Adobe's pile of trash...if I did not NEED the ability to write to .pdf files, and had not be given a free copy of Acrobat Pro, I would so ditch the pile of crap and find something else.
No thanks.
I'll go for the Bright Light.
Even though I don't think MS's tool will make any great inroads, it should shake up Adobe enough to get a great product back on track.
Oh boy, yet another way for peoople to be clueless about what they post about.
Oh boy, yet another way for peoople to be clueless about what they post about.
their proverbial develpment prowess, why don't they aim some
of that vaunted skill at this problem and come up with a Flash
and/or Silverlight media viewers?
Microsoft has hundreds of people working on this. How can they
compete against hundreds of thousands of programmers?
Of course, just because nobody's come up with a distribution
we'd turn over to our grandmothers to install, this new challenge
would yield the same result. Not as usable. Not consistent,
usable or attractive as the big software companies can produce.
Now, that said, at least Microsoft has had the brains to get away with stealing something everyone else was willing to pay for. Besides, Apple's been trying for years to do that, has a comparable (some say better...I don't really care for it) operating system in OS X. I will live with Windows' security issues and keep on using my government-grade encryption of anything important until there actually IS something better. Linux, and in my opinion, OS X, are not there yet, and that is just comparing to XP Pro / Media Center Ed. 2005, not even Vista, which I've never used.
planet.
NO MS CONTROLLING DIGITAL MEDIA STANDARDS!
Too much concentrated power in one company!
iTunes, anyone?
<a class="jive-link-external" href="http://cognitivlabs.com/smallearthtest1.htm" target="_newWindow">http://cognitivlabs.com/smallearthtest1.htm</a>
If MS cured cancer you people would still gripe.
I especially enjoy the comments about the Zune, as it clearly has nothing to do with the topic. Over 80% of the people who whine about Microsoft buy their products and in real life probably don't say a word. Forums are their release I guess.
"If you like the iPod" fits about just as well as the Zune comment.
There's a huge number of people out there who use flash in their development tools exclusively because it the best there is, period. Who would want to move to an inferior develpement environment?
Now you know the answer, you don't need to ask this question again.
The sky is blue and the world is round. I figured i'd add things not relating to topics myself.
This project is made by a different sector of Microsoft, not the same people as the "Zune".
"If you like the iPod..."
However saying that microsoft may get an edge in the widget market but you can bet your bottom dollar Adobe is no underdog here and could well end up uniting the Mac/PC/unix/linux/menuetos eventually in terms of widgets.
When you think about it this is Adobe's bread and butter here and those guys will fight every which way and how in a very well respected professional manner.
will be automatically pushed onto your system, and - by accident -
the flash plugin won't be compatible anymore. And strange but
true, the API changed as well, forcing Adobe to turn to the EC to
sue MS to reveal the new interface. After a process of some years,
MS finally provides the new API to Adobe, but by then no single
website still uses flash.
Microsoft come in and as usual do it better than the competition."
Now THAT's funny!
Microsoft & good design don't mix one bit.
An MS employee once told me = "Rush to market, fix it later". I'm
sure the first few versions will be full of bugs and compatibility
issues. Serious designer/developers will stick with Adobe.
wear off)
I think its a corporate conspiracy to have all products not made with all the features in the world working with all the other products including my mobile, automobile and my wine cooler, to sell additional versions. We should standards like the clothing industry who manufacture clothes that do not fade or tear and the auto industry that make brakes that do not wear out. We should also support the auto industry because they make cars that do not go out of style and have upgradable bodies.
I think the bigger corporaate conspiracy is fostered by this community of folks get time during office hours to provide unconstructive feedback.
ITS JUST ANOTHER PRODUCT !!! GET A LIFE !!!
:)