tag:,2009:/1/tag:www.readwriteweb.com,2008://1.6040- 2009-11-23T19:11:31Z Comments for Silverlight Timetable: 2.0 Coming This Summer Movable Type 4.23-en tag:www.readwriteweb.com,2008://1.6040 2008-04-04T17:45:40Z 2008-04-04T18:33:39Z Silverlight Timetable: 2.0 Coming This Summer Eagle-eyed ZDNet blogger Mary Jo Foley spotted a "rough timetable" for upcoming releases of Microsoft's Flash-killer Silverlight (check out ReadWriteWeb's previous coverage here, here, and here). The timetable pegs the full release for Silverlight 2.0 to come sometime over the summer. It comes via a FAQ posted on the MSDN blog of Microsoft blogger Ashish... Josh Catone http://www.readwriteweb.com/ Eagle-eyed ZDNet blogger Mary Jo Foley spotted a "rough timetable" for upcoming releases of Microsoft's Flash-killer Silverlight (check out ReadWriteWeb's previous coverage here, here, and here). The timetable pegs the full release for Silverlight 2.0 to come sometime over the summer. It comes via a FAQ posted on the MSDN blog of Microsoft blogger Ashish Thapliyal.

]]> Below is the rough roadmap presented by Thapliyal. Though it is rather sparse, it indicates that the final release of Silverlight 2.0 should ship sometime over the summer if all goes according to plan.

  • Silverlight 2.0 Beta 1 (Q1CY08 with limited (non commercial) Go-Live) -- this was released at Mix ‘08 in early March
  • Silverlight 2.0 Beta 2 (Q2CY08 with Go-Live)
  • Silverlight 2.0 RTM (Summer 2008) -- Exact timing TBD
  • Silverlight v.next -- We are working on a v.Next plan and have nothing to announce at this time
  • Silverlight for mobile -- No date available

Thapliyal also promised backwards compatibility between Silverlight 1.0 and 2.0 and that the Beta 2 of the second version of Microsoft's Flash-alike will be very similar to the final version. Beta 2 is espected at the end of May.

Interestingly, Thapliyal takes a slight shot at Adobe in the Silverlight 2.0 FAQ, with a question asking how Silverlight's market penetration compares to Adobe's claim of 98.8% of all Internet users. "We’ve announced that we’re at about 1.5 million downloads per day at the moment. The problem with putting out some % values like Adobe do is that it is hard to be accurate and hard to verify," Thapliyal writes, which is perhaps an indication that Microsoft doesn't buy Adobe's published numbers.

Right now, Silverlight's main strength has been video, and Microsoft's skill in forging corporate partnerships -- like the ones it has formed with the National Basketball Association, Major League Baseball, NBC, and Nokia -- should help push the client out to users. Silverlight 2.0 promises to integrate more of the WPF UI programming controls, as well as other bits which could make it a better option for Rich Internet App creation than the first version. It will be interesting to see what sort of things are made with Silverlight after the final release of version 2.0 ships, and if it can make a dent in Flash's dominating marketshare.

]]> tag:www.readwriteweb.com,2008://1.6040-comment:51091 Comment from Slimy on 2008-04-04 Slimy http://arstechnica.com/journals/microsoft.ars Mary Jo Foley did not discover this. Ars did.
http://arstechnica.com/journals/microsoft.ars/2008/04/03/silverlight-2-rtm-targeted-for-late-summer-release

]]> 2008-04-04T20:38:52Z tag:www.readwriteweb.com,2008://1.6040-comment:51094 Comment from Josh Catone on 2008-04-04 Josh Catone @Slimy: Yes, but Mary Jo was where I saw it first -- and it was her eyes that caught it on Ars -- not mine. Semantics, sure, but ... she deserves some credit imho, and "X via Y via Z" loops are clumsy and annoying.

*shrug*

]]> 2008-04-04T20:53:24Z tag:www.readwriteweb.com,2008://1.6040-comment:51096 Comment from John Dowdell on 2008-04-04 John Dowdell http://weblogs.macromedia.com/jd Howdy Josh, I wasn't certain how much faith to put in Ashish's words, because he referenced a blog from Rahul where the information did not appear, and he did not cite the authority for his speech (official MS timetable? a staffer's casual understanding of the timetable? no info).

The blog's HTML sort of threw me too... displayed cropped in a number of browsers, and when trying to read from "View Source", there were many superfluous spans. I discounted the post when I saw it Thursday.

But that line you cite did bother me:
"We’ve announced that we’re at about 1.5 million downloads per day at the moment. The problem with putting out some % values like Adobe do is that it is hard to be accurate and hard to verify," Thapliyal writes, which is perhaps an indication that Microsoft doesn't buy Adobe's published numbers."

It's Microsoft's statements which are imprecise: Guthrie and others have conflated "downloads" with "installs"... the official MS PR says "downloads" (which usually implies download-initiations rather than download-completions)... more on their phrasing here:
http://weblogs.macromedia.com/jd/archives/2008/03/downloads_vs_in.cfm

The Macromedia and Adobe methodology has always been very clear... gather a representative online consumer sample, and ask whether they can actually see a variety of current content types without installing anything new:
http://www.adobe.com/products/player_census/methodology/

More datapoints: There was recently a "Silverlight metrics" blogpost which advocated a navigator.plugins test to measure audience turn-away... that would be a faulty methodology. I suspect Microsoft will soon try to do a consumer audit like the Adobe viewing test, but would bet they don't break out versioning in their messaging. Comedy TV has found that 75% of consumers asked to install Silverlight just walk away:
http://blog.ctvdigital.net/index.php/2008/03/14/how-many-people-choose-silverlight/

jd/adobe

]]> 2008-04-04T21:05:59Z tag:www.readwriteweb.com,2008://1.6040-comment:51129 Comment from Lora on 2008-04-05 Lora http://funnyhack.blogspot.com yEs I also think that it wasn't her discover..
http://funnyhack.blogspot.com

]]> 2008-04-05T19:19:05Z tag:www.readwriteweb.com,2008://1.6040-comment:51150 Comment from W3G on 2008-04-06 W3G http://w3g.exofire.net Finally its coming, I've been looking towards it.
-W3g

]]> 2008-04-06T11:42:43Z tag:www.readwriteweb.com,2008://1.6040-comment:51223 Comment from derk on 2008-04-07 derk "Silverlight's main strength has been video".

That statement is wrong, pal. SilverLight's strength is that it's an application platform that will outshine Asp.Net (or any other HTML-based technology) as the ideal presentation tier choice. That's huge. That means web developers no longer have to be handicapped by HTML & JAVASCRIPT which were never quite up to the Web 2.0 standard. A serious replacement for HTML & Javascript has been on demand for years. Now finally M$ is the first one to deliver it.

I'd like to give Flash/Flex some credits also, but then Adobe stuff is not really an end to end solution so I'd skip them for now.

]]> 2008-04-08T04:55:14Z tag:www.readwriteweb.com,2008://1.6040-comment:52843 Comment from Guy on 2008-04-23 Guy I think the primary value of SilverLight comes down to one key fact: it uses WPF. As a WPF developer who also knows (and loves) Flash, I have to tell you: I am overjoyed that I can now leverage my WPF content on the browser side as well. Is it a perfect conversion? No chance. But it’s WAY easier than doing something from scratch in Flash.

SilverLight is a great concept that's coming into reality at a good pace, and as more existing .Net developers make the transition to .Net 3.x (i.e. WPF), they’ll be able to enter the world of rich media web content without having to learn Flash as well (a huge barrier if you don’t know it already).

I've gotten a lot of mileage out of Flash, but if I can do something on either, I’ll use SilverLight hands down to get the amortization benefit of code across two platforms. It's just simple ROI.

]]> 2008-04-23T13:28:21Z