[thelist] MS Silverlight

[John Dowdell]

Charles (?) wrote:
> Hard-core Linux folks were religously anti-Flash too, until Adobe did it.
> Now, Flash on Linux is used by the same people to show that Linux is
> starting to enter the mainstream as a desktop environment.

Macromedia Flash Player has been on *nix since the start:
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/alternates

The reasons there was such a furor last year include:

(a)  Adobe Flash Player had parallel development cycles for v8 and v9... 
graphics performance and a new video codec were the improvements in v8, 
and a logic engine with just-in-time compilation to native machine code 
was the big deal in v9. Linux Player didn't go partway to v8, but went 
direct to v9, with a bit longer gap.

(b)  Meanwhile, Adobe Flash Player was reaching 80%+ consumer 
viewability in an astounding nine months, rather than the year-plus of 
previous cycles. Many sites started using SWF8 very quickly this cycle.

(c)  The sudden popularity of SWF8 video at sites like YouTube increased 
the pain factor... caught Linux users smack dab in the middle.



> Microsoft hasn't said that they won't support Linux, and Miguel de Icaza has
> already said that Mono will have Silverlight support on Linux by the end of
> the year.  This is a Good Thing for Linux, regardless of how any particular
> user feels.

I've been reading what Miguel has actually been saying, and when he has 
actually reviewed specs. We'll have to see what can actually be 
accomplished, and what the fidelity is to the canonical Microsoft runtimes.

jd/adobe





-- 
John Dowdell . Adobe Developer Support . San Francisco CA USA
Weblog: http://weblogs.macromedia.com/jd
Aggregator: http://weblogs.macromedia.com/mxna
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Spam killed my private email -- public record is best, thanks.