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Microsoft Silverlight Supports Mac

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Original poster
Apr 12, 2001
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A Channelweb article describes a new product from Microsoft called Silverlight which is a new web browser client for "advanced, browser-based video functionality."

Silverlight is said to be going head-to-head against Adobe's Flash, and is said to offer advanced functionality.

Netflix plans to adopt Silverlight as the foundation for its instant-viewing feature; a demo showed off high-quality streaming video overlaid with DVD-like menus and controls. A preview of forthcoming on-demand video functionality from MLB.com had attendees clamoring for the developing new features to hurry up and get finished.
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As impressive as the demos were, the most remarkable aspect of the demo was Microsoft's commitment to make the platform "open" and "interoperable".

While Microsoft is famed for its halfhearted or nonexistant support for running its software on rival platforms, the company vows Silverlight will be different: Version one is slated to run natively in Safari and Firefox as well as Internet Explorer (both version 6 and 7), and Opera support is in the works.
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The demo stage reportedly had a number of Macs with a large portion of the demo devoted to their usage. Unfortunately, authoring support is only available on the Windows platform.

A beta version is available now.
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2007/05/01/microsoft-silverlight-supports-ie-safari-and-firefox/
Macrumors said:
The demo stage reportedly had a number of Macs with a large portion of the demo devoted to their usage. Unfortunately, authoring support is only available on the Windows platform.
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And there's the kicker... I wonder what the chances are of there ever being a compareable Mac authoring package. :rolleyes:

Looks like Microsoft is trying to muscle it's way into the creative market by once again leveraging it's OS market share.
 
stoid said:
And there's the kicker... I wonder what the chances are of there ever being a compareable Mac authoring package. :rolleyes:

Looks like Microsoft is trying to muscle it's way into the creative market by once again leveraging it's OS market share.


edit: First post worth reading :rolleyes:
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The real question is...how long until they abandon the Mac client like with WMP. My vote is for Adobe and their Flash player. They have no OS agenda like MS.
 
Boycott Silverlight and everyone who uses it....

This needs to be killed early....

Its just another MS attempt to kill off rival standards - be it Flash, GoogleVideo, YouTube, Quicktime etc etc.

Avoid like the plague, or we will all suffer later....
 
fastred said:
This needs to be killed early....

Its just another MS attempt to kill off rival standards - be it Flash, GoogleVideo, YouTube, Quicktime etc etc.

Avoid like the plague, or we will all suffer later....
Click to expand...

Flash doesn't really have any real competition out there, so I wouldn't go on such an extreme and call for an immediate boycott. In the end, SOME competition is most often good for the consumer as it drives companies to make their products better.
 
There are a lot of websites delivering WMV content out there that don't work at all on Macs - like the Netflix player (due to use of ActiveX for player control). Anything that works cross platform, no matter who produces it, is welcome to me.

I put the wpf/e beta (aka silverlight) on my Mac several weeks ago, and it works just as well as in Windows. The team has promised Linux support later.

As for the development tools - you don't need MS's tools. Silverlight is based on XAML and javascript so you can use any text editor to create content, albeit with a lot of trouble. If this takes off, there will be third party OSS projects to create such tools.

By the way, Flash isn't a "standard", any more than Windows is (i.e. it's a de facto standard). It's proprietary. You have to pay Adobe for the Flash development tools.
 
AGREED! (insert secret handshake)

fastred said:
This needs to be killed early....

Its just another MS attempt to kill off rival standards - be it Flash, GoogleVideo, YouTube, Quicktime etc etc.

Avoid like the plague, or we will all suffer later....
Click to expand...

I find it hard to believe that people are really looking for new standards. The only nice thing would be that MAYBE adobe will lower it's prices.

I really don't want to download yet ANOTHER player for my browser.

Rather than see APPLE create their own platform for web animation, they should create a program similar to iWEB or add to iWEB allowing people to use templates to create advanced FLASH files without needing to know how to edit the script.

Drag and Drop, but still supporting FLASH and it's "mission"

I know these programs already exist, but they aren't that well known. There is room for growth in that market and room for the "APPLE TOUCH".
 
plinden said:
There are a lot of websites delivering WMV content out there that don't work at all on Macs - like the Netflix player (due to use of ActiveX for player control). Anything that works cross platform, no matter who produces it, is welcome to me.

I put the wpf/e beta (aka silverlight) on my Mac several weeks ago, and it works just as well as in Windows. The team has promised Linux support later.

As for the development tools - you don't need MS's tools. Silverlight is based on XAML and javascript so you can use any text editor to create content, albeit with a lot of trouble. If this takes off, there will be third party OSS projects to create such tools.

By the way, Flash isn't a "standard", any more than Windows is (i.e. it's a de facto standard). It's proprietary. You have to pay Adobe for the Flash development tools.
Click to expand...

I haven't had any trouble in recent memory viewing WMV files on my mac, do you have Flip4Mac?
 
Great. More web standards. :rolleyes:

I will applaud Microsoft on keeping it open interoperable though.
 
KingofAwesome said:
I haven't had any trouble in recent memory viewing WMV files on my mac, do you have Flip4Mac?
Click to expand...

It's not the content, it's what these websites use to deliver the content - take a look at Netflix's "Watch Now" or AT&T's Broadband TV. An ordinary WMV will display fine with Flip4Mac, but if the player is controlled via ActiveX, there's no way you are going to be able view anything without IE on Windows.
 
Well, so far I've got a bad impression of it. In the download instructions, step two is to leave that page for another page and press the download button. Why are you making users browse away from the instructions so soon, Microsoft?

The big show-stopper for me came after running the installation package. There's no option to just install for this user, and since this is a work computer I don't have admin rights. Why can't I install it just under my own account?
 
*Yawn*

Whatever happened to the photoshop "rival" M$ released a year or two ago?

All I really remember of it was M$ released a beta and the design community had a good chuckle and got back to work.
 
It seems to work okay ... but what is the benefit of this over flash?

Flash supports all three operating systems and works okay.

This supports two operating system and works okay.

I don't get it?
 
plinden said:
It's not the content, it's what these websites use to deliver the content - take a look at Netflix's "Watch Now" or AT&T's Broadband TV. An ordinary WMV will display fine with Flip4Mac, but if the player is controlled via ActiveX, there's no way you are going to be able view anything without IE on Windows.
Click to expand...

Ok, that's different. I thought you were saying you couldn't view any video that used the WMV codec.

I haven't been able to use ActiveX sites in quite some time anyway because for the last few years I used PC's, I was running Firefox and Mozilla. Hey, if they don't want my web traffic, I can click on the ads on other websites instead. :)
 
Ah yes, the ol' "We're really going to play nice this time" ploy... This is just going to go the way of all their other cross platform initiatives: WMP, IE, Windows NT, VPC, MAPI, PlaysForSure... I'm sure ya'll can add to that list.

longofest said:
Flash doesn't really have any real competition out there, so I wouldn't go on such an extreme and call for an immediate boycott. In the end, SOME competition is most often good for the consumer as it drives companies to make their products better.
Click to expand...
I agree, but this isn't competition-- this is a trap. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me a few dozen times and I start to notice the pattern...
 
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