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Geek Culture / Microsoft Silverlight Surface

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Raven
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Joined: 23rd Mar 2005
Location: Hertfordshire, England
Posted: 3rd Jun 2007 19:07
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not sure how many of you have experienced Silverlight yet, but it's something I've been tinkering with for a couple of weeks now.
I've found it's extremely useful, and not just for RichInternet Applications.

It's essencially Microsoft's stab at Flash, however it's so much more useful given the tools for development are already present on everyone's system who uses Vista.

I have a small project in the works that uses it, which I'll be showing off when I'm happy with it. But for now I'd advice people to check out what it's capable of.

One of the more simple demos is this -> http://delay.members.winisp.net/SilverlightSurface/

it mimics microsoft's surface pc, although it doesn't have streaming video in the example; believe it or not that is actually fairly simple to add.

Check out some of the other Silverlight examples, as this definately the next wave of internet interaction.

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Phaelax
DBPro Master
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Joined: 16th Apr 2003
Location: Metropia
Posted: 3rd Jun 2007 21:19
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I heard about it and wanted to try it, but doesn't run only on XP and Vista? (i run win2k at home)
I'm running a Mac right now, need to install the plugin first. Strangely, it recommends a P3 450mhz for Windows but a minimum of a Core Duo 1.83ghz for Mac.


Have you heard of JavaFX yet?


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Pricey
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Posted: 3rd Jun 2007 21:39
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that is probably because it ONLY runs on x86 chips
and the slowest x86 chip used in a mac is a Core Duo 1.83ghz

http://forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view&t=97191&b=32
God Of Thunder DEMO
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Raven
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Posted: 3rd Jun 2007 22:31
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There is a Mac Universal version on it's way iirc
Should work on Windows 2000, but doubt it'll be supported.

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Josh
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Location: Pompey, Great Britain =D
Posted: 4th Jun 2007 23:13
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hmm. It seems that Google is attempting something similar, and already has a few big names on-board.

Is Silverlight IE only? Because web browsers are getting into such a mess right now its ridiculous. How as we as web developers expected to code a single website to run under so many different platforms?

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Raven
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Posted: 4th Jun 2007 23:23
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Explorer, FireFox or Safari
Google only started theirs after Microsoft announced Silverlight.

tbh I highly doubt Google are going to be able to compete with it. Macromedia are going to be the biggest competition, even then how they're suppose to compete against a system that runs in a special cut-down browser based version of .NET so effectively running at nearly the full potencial your hardware allows is beyond me.

I mean Silverlight technially doesn't bring anything new over ActionScript 2.0, however it's more free on how you impliment it; and the technology is far far quicker. Having native 3D also really helps this performance of many aspects you might use.

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Josh
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Posted: 4th Jun 2007 23:51 Edited at: 4th Jun 2007 23:52
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Isn't Macromedia owned by Adobe? And AFAIK Adobe (and therefore Macromedia) has teamed up with Google to build Google Gears...

I already use Google for everything else so why not replace MS Office with something a lot cheaper and more easily available?

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Raven
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Posted: 5th Jun 2007 00:10
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i dunno, don't follow google as i find all of their products pretty crap. just surprised at how many web and application developers when Silverlight was announced seem to not even know what it is let alone don't seem to be excited about what it means interactive wise.

i mean it would be fairly simple to build a website that was a live online ide for dbp that also had built-in applecode features like team talk and multi-user code editing.

the applications for it feel pretty limitless atm

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Josh
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Posted: 5th Jun 2007 01:02
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haha I use Google for everything you could imagine, but maybe that's just me..

Yeah the thing with Silverlight is that it's developed by MS, so those of us who make a living out of building web applications don't want yet another mish-mash of a platform. We already have to deal with the compatibility problems of HTML/CSS/JS/AJAX. We don't need any more problems lol!

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Raven
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Posted: 5th Jun 2007 01:54
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perhaps you should read up on the technology then.
microsoft are trying their best to make to as multi-platform as possible.

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Zappo
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Posted: 5th Jun 2007 02:24
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As a Web developer I am huge fan of Flash (when used correctly), especially for games and animations. Silverlight would have to have a huge penetration before I considered using it. The fact that Flash is available for just about every platform including mobile devices is a major draw, especially as over 98% of Internet connected PCs can play Flash content making it the most pervasive software platform in the world.
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indi
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Location: Earth, Brisbane, Australia
Posted: 5th Jun 2007 02:44
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future splash developer here, moved to flash when macromedia bought it, stayed with flash when adobe bought it. I can write software for 200 mhz + computers with flash, thats great for usability epsecially in educational sectors etc..

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Raven
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Posted: 5th Jun 2007 03:29
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Quote: "As a Web developer I am huge fan of Flash (when used correctly), especially for games and animations. Silverlight would have to have a huge penetration before I considered using it. The fact that Flash is available for just about every platform including mobile devices is a major draw, especially as over 98% of Internet connected PCs can play Flash content making it the most pervasive software platform in the world."


While Mobile platforms are currently unsupported, Silverlight does support Windows (Explorer/FireFox) and MacOSX (x86/PPC Safari).
Official Linux\AmigaOS\BeOS\Other support is currently not there, but it is possible to manually download the .xpi for FireFox. So if you're computer can run FireFox (x86-32/64) then you can use Silverlight.

There will no doubt be a java installer for this within the next couple of months. As for games, and animation.
Microsoft Expression allows you to design, blend, and edit anything you want. Designed for Games, Websites, Animations and Video.

What's possibly more interesting is that Silverlight is a Java-based .NET Bootstrap, that provides a front-end that is system independant. Given how it's designed you can access it, either via Java, JavaScript or .NET CLR Languages.

Makes it extremely portable and highly programmable. Silverlight scenes themselves utilise XAML for all of the resources, which is an extended version of XML (very easy to understand) with resources for 2D, 3D, Database and DHTML callback code.

On the whole, it makes the development process fairly easy to get some very impressive results. Design realistically makes Silverlight comparible with Flash, as it's essentically Flash CS for Silverlight.

But as I said, there are so many more aspects that make it far more versitile. The integration and performance imo make it so impressive. You can create at whatever level you feel suits you, and your needs. When you add this to integration being made via JavaScript rather than a self-contained object. It allows you to blend the both of both normal XHTML, CSS, PHP, ASP.NET, MsSQL, MySQL and Silverlight.

That scaleability really makes it truely awesome.

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Josh
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Posted: 5th Jun 2007 14:57
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Hmm, does it require the .NET framework to be installed on the end-users computer? If so, that would be a major problem for legacy support, and for mobile devices.

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Raven
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Posted: 5th Jun 2007 16:24
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It doesn't use full .NET but rather a special cut-down version that installs with the plug-in.

They are however finally making .NET multi-platform (starting with OSX),but thats really a complete different note.

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Josh
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Posted: 5th Jun 2007 18:30
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ahh I see. Thats much better then. Maybe they'll actually build this into a future service pack for Windows sometime..

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