{"id":46,"date":"2008-05-12T00:01:35","date_gmt":"2008-05-12T07:01:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/?p=46"},"modified":"2008-05-12T07:04:49","modified_gmt":"2008-05-12T14:04:49","slug":"the-silverlight-question","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/?p=46","title":{"rendered":"The Silverlight Question"},"content":{"rendered":"

Perhaps you’ve gone to Windows Update recently or even visited the microsoft.com<\/code> home page. You noticed something called Microsoft Sliverlight<\/em>. Like me, you probably installed it. Then you probably noticed that your computer wouldn’t start, or something equally weird. So you did a System Restore. That leads to the question, what the heck is Microsoft Silverlight<\/em> and do you really need it?
\n
\nThe short answer: Microsoft Silverlight is the Evil Empire’s attempt to knock off Adobe Flash.<\/p>\n

Silverlight (which is a bitch to type) is a web browser plug-in. It provides features in a weak attempt to do what Adobe Flash does.<\/p>\n

What’s Adobe Flash<\/em>?<\/p>\n

Glad you asked! Adobe Flash, or just “Flash” for short, provides animated and automated content for web pages. Just about any video you see on the web (including here<\/a> on Wambooli) is a Flash animation. Web-based games are mostly Flash. And nearly all web page advertising your see is Flash.<\/p>\n

Flash, Flash, Flash. All that Flash-iness has caught Microsoft’s attention.<\/p>\n

Adobe pretty much has the web animation market cornered. Well, cornering markets is really what Microsoft thinks it’s all about. Adobe is too big to consume, so Microsoft instead toys with them by introducing a competing technology. And, as is tradition, Microsoft’s product is an inept, bloated, and awkward attempt to do what’s already being done effective and well.<\/p>\n

Am I being mean? No! After all, most of the animated content on Microsoft’s own web page is done by Flash, not Silverlight. (Tee-hee<\/em>!)<\/p>\n

Knowing the Microsoft playbook, their next series of step will most likely be as follows:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Adopt some made-up Web-plug-in-animation standard. A standard that will apply 100 percent to Silverlight but not at all to Flash.<\/li>\n
  2. Rig Windows\/Internet Explorer so that running Flash becomes slow and unreliable. Adobe will point this out, and:<\/li>\n
  3. Microsoft will be investigated by the U.S. Justice Dept. (once again) for monopolistic behavior. At the same time:<\/li>\n
  4. Microsoft will entice key software engineers away from Adobe with lucrative employment deals.<\/li>\n
  5. Adobe’s stock will suffer.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    In the end, Adobe will survive, but having to fight Microsoft is not why Adobe went into business, so the only party who really suffers is the consumer.<\/p>\n

    And that, boys and girls, is the answer to the Silverlight Question.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Perhaps you’ve gone to Windows Update recently or even visited the microsoft.com home page. You noticed something called Microsoft Sliverlight. Like me, you probably installed it. Then you probably noticed that your computer wouldn’t start, or something equally weird. So you did a System Restore. That leads to the question, what the heck is Microsoft […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=46"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}