Webware

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.

Despite the fact that Microsoft has competing products of its own, some influential folks within the company have seen some merits of "Open Web" technology that's a standard part of browsers.

The interesting case in point is Microsoft Office 14, the upcoming version of one of the company's core products and profit engines. The software, due in beta form in 2009, is of Microsoft's highest-profile efforts to bring its desktop software power to the Web.

Chris Capossela

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET)

Specifically, when it comes to the best tools for building rich Web applications, Microsoft has promoted its own Silverlight plug-in as superior to the lowly JavaScript that's built into browsers.

"I would use Silverlight any place starting new," Brad Becker, who as group product manager for rich client platforms at Microsoft helps oversee Silverlight, said in a 2008 interview. The online Google Docs applications are built using JavaScript-based technology called Ajax, but, he asked, "How many shops out there have the Ajax chops that Google does?"

However, Silverlight might well be easier to program and offer slicker results, but JavaScript has the advantage when it comes to ubiquity. Thus, Office 14 will be built on JavaScript, with optional Silverlight-based features for those who have the plug-in installed, said Chris Capossela, the senior vice president who oversees product management for Microsoft group that builds Office.

"The fundamental premise for Web apps is you want to be able to get at your Web apps no matter where you are," Capossela said in an interview.

Silverlight optional
Though Microsoft has expressed confidence Silverlight will spread broadly--by luring people to install Silverlight to watch the Olympics online for example--it's far from ubiquitous today. And Microsoft wants people to be able to use Office 14 online not just from their own computers, but also from friends' machines or airport kiosks where people don't have administrative privileges to install software, Capossela said.

Microsoft's demonstration of Web-based Excel. (Click to enlarge.)

(Credit: Microsoft)

Silverlight will improve the online Office 14 interface when installed, though Capossela wouldn't share details of how beyond an earlier demonstration of zooming a document to high magnification. But, he argued, Microsoft doesn't have to reproduce all the features of ordinary Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote in its online incarnations.

"You're probably not going to work for three hours straight in a browser, but you're going to want to do some lightweight work no matter what machine you have," he said. And if you're editing documents on your own computer, "We already have something on your machine. It's called Office. It defeats the purpose of doing productivity in the browser."

Balancing act
The view sheds some light on the balance Microsoft hopes to strike between the regular and Web versions of Office. Although the Web version of Office will be available for free in ad-supported form and in a licensed or hosted form for companies willing to pay, the company obviously still considers the PC-based version of Office the cornerstone of the business.

Google, on the other hand, which has no desktop software cash cow either to protect or benefit from, has every incentive to make Google Docs as powerful as possible.

That means Google has a stronger incentive to support JavaScript advances.

JavaScript speed has become a horse race among most browser makers, with Google loudly trumpeting performance of its V8 JavaScript engine built into Chrome. Internet Explorer trails Chrome, Apple's Safari, and Mozilla's Firefox in JavaScript execution speed, though the new IE 8 does better than its predecessor.

JavaScript runs a lot more than just Google Docs on the Web, so Microsoft doesn't have an incentive to retard IE progress just to spite its rival. But the fact that the company does have a version of Office that runs natively on the PC means the company isn't as reliant on JavaScript advances.

Microsoft's demonstration of Web-based PowerPoint. (Click to enlarge.)

(Credit: Microsoft)

"We can make a very good experience in the browser and we don't have to compete with the rich-client experience we have today," Capossela said.

Ultraparanoia
What will be most intriguing to see as Office 14 arrives is whether Microsoft's attitudes shift. After all, Office is widely used, and the company certainly doesn't want people to have a negative experience with online Office overall or online Office in IE when there are competitors. So there are incentives for the company to improve JavaScript in IE, even though they aren't as strong as Google's.

Done right, online Office could help cement Microsoft's power as cloud computing arrives, bringing advantages such as the ability to let multiple people simultaneously edit the same document. Done wrong, it could yield power to Google as it seeks to expand its search power into other domains.

But though Microsoft may not be the first to the cloud with online productivity tools, don't expect it to be complacent. The Office business successfully navigated the transition from software running on isolated PCs to software that relies on a server for e-mail access or collaboration, Capossela said, and the company is paying close attention to the cloud transition.

"The use of these Web apps today is incredibly small," Capossela said. However, "we always feel ultraparanoid about missing out on something."

AOL has updated its Silverlight-powered Web mail beta with a handful of small, but important features that bring it closer in functionality to its standard Web counterpart.

Users can now print e-mails they've received, add a standard signature that gets attached to every outgoing message, flag and filter messages, and watch WMV-formatted video that's been sent as an attachment in full screen using the embedded video player. This is actually one of the coolest features of the bunch, since it provides a quick thumbnail preview, then opens it in a player that comes up as an on-screen overlay. You are, however somewhat limited in what you can watch, since the attached videos need to fit into AOL's 16MB limit.

The beta still lags behind AOL's normal Web mail service. For instance, it does not let you save messages-in-progress as drafts, accessing the calendar and making changes requires going off-site, and it's only got three different themes to choose from as opposed to the normal service's 40 plus. You've also got to have the latest version of Silverlight installed, which has not been getting good press lately in the streaming-video department. For tools like this though, its fading menus and refresh-free page updates give the Web e-mail experience more wow-factor.

AOL is expected to launch this new version as an optional replacement for its standard service later this year.

The updated AOL Mail RIA beta shows you a quick preview of videos before you play them, and lets you watch in full-screen right in your browser.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

MySpace announced Monday a twofold partnership with Microsoft: first, a MySpace mobile application for Windows Mobile phones, and second, support for Microsoft's Silverlight technology in the News Corp.-owned social network's developer platform.

The Windows Mobile application will be available this summer for Windows Mobile 6.1 phones and then more broadly in the fall. It'll be preloaded on Windows Mobile phones manufactured by LG, too. The app joins existing MySpace mobile products for iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, Sidekick, Palm, and Nokia handsets.

As for the Silverlight announcement, this means that developers building applications for MySpace's platform--which is based on the Google-created OpenSocial standard--have access to Adobe Flash competitor.

The announcements themselves are fairly mundane. But here's what's really interesting: Microsoft has invested $240 million in Facebook, which was at one point the second-place name in social networking--behind MySpace. But while MySpace still has more users in the U.S., Facebook is now significantly bigger worldwide.

In recent months, perhaps as a reaction to Facebook's explosive growth and domination of the social-networking landscape, MySpace has been making numerous efforts to return to its roots as a music and media hub.

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.

Rumors have abounded over the years about a Google operating system, perhaps based on the Ubuntu version of Linux widely used within the company, but on Monday the company revealed an open-source project that provides a different answer to the same problem: Native Client.

The reason I've been skeptical about Google releasing an operating system of its own is that the company has such a Web-based view of the world. But Web apps have limits, impressive gains of Google Docs notwithstanding, and Native Client is geared to address those.

"At Google we're always trying to make the Web a better platform. That's why we're working on Native Client, a technology that aims to give Web developers access to the full power of the client's CPU while maintaining the browser neutrality, OS portability and safety that people expect from Web applications," said Brad Chen of Google's Native Client team in a blog posting.

Google has a three-lobed mission: search, ads, and apps. It does well on the first two, but Web-based applications remain rough for most users. Native Client could change that if Google develops the project to maturity, convinces people to install it, and convinces programmers to write for it.

The software plug-in works in conjunction with various Web browsers but lets Web-based applications take advantage of a computer's significant processing horsepower. That puts it in a similar camp as Sun Microsystems' Java, Microsoft's Silverlight, and Adobe Systems' Flash, which, like Native Client, include a "runtime" foundation for running the software.

Although Native Client is just a research project at this stage, the move could have powerful long-term consequences for the battle to create the most compelling foundation for Web-based applications. The technology philosophically meshes with Adobe's hybrid philosophy of running applications both on servers and PCs.

So far, Native Client works on Firefox, Safari, Opera, and Chrome on any modern system with an x86 processor running Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux, Google said.

With a back-to-the-future technology called JavaFX to be launched Thursday, Sun Microsystems hopes to attract a new class of developer while building a much-needed new revenue source.

JavaFX 1.0 returns to the sales pitch that Sun used during Java's launch more than 13 years ago: a foundation for software on a wide variety of computing "clients" such as desktop computers or mobile phones. JavaFX builds on current Java technology but adds two major pieces.

Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET Networks)

First is a new software foundation designed to run so-called rich Internet applications--network-enabled programs with lush user interfaces. Second is a new programming language called JavaFX Script that's intended to be easier to use than traditional Java.

But JavaFX faces some steep challenges. Chief among them: while Sun spent much of its energy adapting Java for servers, a host of other software options for building rich Internet applications sprang up. Java paved the way in 1995, but now it's got to take on Adobe Systems' Flash and AIR, Microsoft's newer arrival, Silverlight, and JavaScript and its more sophisticated cousin Ajax.

"This is the essence of the Hail Mary," said Illuminata analyst Jonathan Eunice. "I would like to think there's a role for Java on the client, but it's very late."

But Chief Executive Jonathan Schwartz, despite Sun's dropping revenue, low stock price, and large new layoff, believes that JavaFX will overcome its obstacles.

"Don't confuse relevance for stock price," he said, pointing to Java's widespread adoption among developers and students, and to Sun's expansion into newer open-source areas such as the MySQL database software. "We're more relevant today than any other software developer on the face of the Earth."

And while JavaFX may not be widely discussed today as a rich Internet application foundation, "I promise you that will change in the next 60 to 90 days," Schwartz said.

Java's stronghold
With help from allies such as IBM, Sun built Java into a powerful technology for server software tasks such as running stock-trading applications. And it gained a stronghold on millions of mobile phones.

But it missed out on desktop computers, where it was notoriously slow to load, and lost out chiefly to JavaScript built into the browser and to Adobe's Flash plug-in. On mobile phones, Java has suffered from a sprawling set of optional features that undermine its "write once, run anywhere" promise to developers. Different phones essentially have different varieties of Java.

JavaFX is designed to address both of those issues. First, a more unified "runtime" foundation spans PCs and mobile phones, though the latter version isn't expected until the first half of 2009. And this time, Sun supplies it in an unmodified form so phone manufacturers won't splinter it into incompatible versions.

Sun is promoting JavaFX as a good way to write rich Internet applications. (Click to enlarge.)

(Credit: Sun Microsystems)

"We're making our binaries available" to mobile-phone makers "so we can unify the Java platform implementations," said Schwartz, who expects rapid adoption. "We're starting with a couple billion handsets in the marketplace and swimming downstream."

The business case
Sun also will charge those handset makers a per-unit royalty for JavaFX, and right now, Sun needs all the revenue it can get. Although Java has been good for Sun's brand, it hasn't been a cash cow, but here again, Schwartz has high expectations.

"Java has become the single most profitable software product at Sun, growing more rapidly than any other," he said, pointing to billings (PDF) that Sun charged customers in the company's most recent quarter.

In raw revenue, though, its 18 percent growth to $34 million lagged that of MySQL, for which billings grew 50 percent annually to $37 million. And Sun's hardware revenue still is an order of magnitude larger than its software revenue.

Schwartz also believes that JavaFX has more appeal to content providers because it comes from a neutral technology supplier, not a potential rival.

"The problem with browsers, when viewed as the default mechanism for delivering content for the Web, is that browsers have become hostile territory," Schwartz argued. "Internet Explorer is owned by Microsoft. Firefox is owned by Google, at this point. Chrome is owned by Google. Beyond that, with maybe (the exception) of Safari, which is owned by Apple, there is no safe route to distribute your content into the marketplace."

Perhaps JavaFX's open-source nature reduces the threat that Sun could hold a business partner hostage. But when it comes to safety, there also are risks to betting on new technology.

Distributing JavaFX is another challenge. The auto-update feature in desktop Java will take care of PCs, starting next year--though people will be able to actively download it sooner in coming days--but for mobile phones, Sun relies on handset makers and electronics companies such as TV makers to build it in.

EZ coding
JavaFX is designed to be easier to use too. The JavaFX Script origins lie in a project originally called F3, short for the "form follows function" slogan from the Bauhaus school of architectural thought.

"You can use Java to solve difficult problems," but doing so often requires sophisticated programming, said Eric Klein, Sun's vice president of Java marketing. And regular Java isn't well-adapted to creating basic, media-rich applications that run in browsers. Building a simple media player application in Java takes 100 lines of code, but JavaFX Script can do it in 20 or 30 lines, he said.

"The goal was to make (the) power of Java accessible to an entirely new class of developers," Klein said. "For existing developers, it would accelerate how fast they could get things done."

JavaFX also comes with a slick feature, the ability to move running applications out of the browser and onto the desktop--and back, if desired. Essentially, they can change their nature and abilities according to where they're housed. And the same application also can run on JavaFX Mobile, holding the promise for programmers that they won't have to endlessly rewrite the same applications for different media.

"You can build a media player, run it in a browser, then you can simply drag it out of your browser onto your desktop, and it becomes a desktop application automatically. It's the same code, the same application," said Jeet Kaul, Sun's senior vice president of Java engineering.

Moving to the desktop, the application could take advantage of new screen real estate that affords a better user interface and new permissions for tasks such as writing files to a hard drive, Kaul said.

Again, though, incumbent players have an edge. JavaScript has matured as an interface language, Flash has many loyal developer fans, and Silverlight is powerful, Eunice said.

"I'm invariably skeptical that a language you don't know yet is going to be easier than all the languages you do know," Eunice said. And unlike with earlier chapters of the Java saga, "Sun has to do all this heavy lifting on its own."

Adobe Systems wants to have it both ways.

Microsoft's power with programmers is tethered to desktops and laptops, the vast majority of which run Windows. Google is trying to dominate what it believes is the new frontier, cloud computing, where applications run on the Web. Adobe, though, is trying to run down the middle with a strategy that touches on both domains.

"It's a balance of the client and cloud together that makes for the most effective applications and the best development," said Adobe Chief Technology Officer Kevin Lynch, who's planning to speak on the subject in a keynote speech Monday at the company's Max conference in San Francisco.

Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET News)

Since Adobe's $3.4 billion Macromedia acquisition in 2005, programming technology has been rising in importance within a company that got its start with publishing software such as Photoshop. The technology that brought the two companies together, Flash, will hog the spotlight at the conference.

Flash got its start as a way to give Web pages animations and basic applications such as games, but it's grown up since then. The Flex technology has given developers a more mature programming model, and the addition of video-streaming abilities to the Flash Player that's plugged into the vast majority of Web browsers has given Adobe's technology incumbent status. Who can live online without YouTube?

Adobe is still working on Flash, releasing Flash Player 10, aka Astro, in October. At Max, though, a Flash cousin called AIR--the Adobe Integrated Runtime--will share the stage with the release of version 1.5.

Flash and AIR are key to bridging the cloud-PC gap. For example, Adobe has launched an online Photoshop.com service, where members can upload, edit, and share photos. The site uses Flash to run the processing-intensive editing software on people's own computers, not Adobe's servers, Lynch said.

"Our operational costs for hosting that application are much lower than if we had server-side processing," and users get better performance, Lynch said.

But Flash still lives largely within the browser. Adobe hopes to uproot it with AIR, a "runtime" foundation for housing applications. AIR runs Flash programs but also has a built-in engine for showing Web pages and for running programs written in JavaScript, which is widely used for Web-based applications. And AIR is available for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux, and programmers who write AIR applications don't have to worry about what operating system is on a person's computer.

Flash Player 10 was code-named Astro.

(Credit: Adobe Systems)

Astro is launched.

On Wednesday, Adobe Systems announced the release of a major update to its Flash technology to endow Web sites with better video, audio, and graphics. The new version 10 was code-named Astro, and it arrived just days after Microsoft released version 2.0 of its rival Silverlight software.

Flash Player 10, a free download also available for Windows and Mac users from Download.com, includes a number of new features:

• Easier-to-use 3D graphics effects.

• Better text handling for more sophisticated layouts combining words and graphics, more refined typography, and better multilingual applications.

• Better sound handling, so that different audio signals can be mixed together--for example, a music sound track with a game's audio effects.

• High-performance visual effects using technology called Pixel Bender that also works with After Effects CS4 and Photoshop CS4.

• Better abilities to tap into hardware acceleration.

• Adaptable video streaming that can adjust to changing network throughput.

Flash Player is a key part of Adobe's push to make Web-based applications more powerful. Adobe's Flex framework can be used to create applications that run on the Flash Player or as standalone computer applications running on AIR, the Adobe Integrated Runtime.

Flash and Silverlight aren't the only ways to make these so-called rich Internet applications, though. Silverlight, which drafts off Microsoft's strong developer base and its .Net programming technology, is a newer competitor. And JavaScript is growing up as a way to build more elaborate interfaces in Web applications. Flash, however, enjoys a very broad adoption, and users upgrade to the newer versions relatively swiftly.

Flash Player 10 also is used within Adobe's Creative Suite 4, a broad range of applications including Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, and Premiere that just began shipping. Because control panels are written with Flash technology, CS4 menus can be extended by third parties more easily, and Adobe plans to release a Configurator by the end of the month that will make it easy to create custom control panels.

Update 11:25 a.m. PDT: One big Pixel Bender fan is online photo editing site Picnik. Flash Player 10 speeds the site and enables "mind-blowing effects." It also means third parties can create effects of their own using the Pixel Bender technology. See some examples below.

"Future plans with Flash Player 10 include the addition of super high‐resolution photo capabilities, more sophisticated editing features, and the ability to load and save photos without involving an upload to a server," Picnik said Wednesday.

One special effect enabled by Flash Player 10 on Picnik's online photo editing site.

(Credit: Picnik)

Another Flash Player 10 effect in Picnik.

(Credit: Picnik)