[PLUG-Devel] Hi all

[Tim Heuer]

Thanks Ted.  Here's a stab :-)

-what's the point of silverlight...
It's really about choice in the rich internet application space (RIA).  Developers now have the ability to support a broad (dare I say 99%) of desktops (linux, mac, win) with this technology.  Why silverlight over moonlight?  Microsoft implemented silverlight as an offering in the RIA space.  Miguel and his top-notch team saw an opportunity to provide the linux implementation of that -- and so they did.  Microsoft tossed around the idea of creating our own linux implementation and gathered feedback from customers, but it appears the best solution was to partner with great minds that already did it...therefore providing the developers in this space/technology with the choice.  Silverlight will likely be the chosen platform for most organizations who are already doing Microsoft development.  I think that is just natural to be honest.  Just as much as a linux organization would be using core linux offerings...it is expected.  With both of these, we have a complementary offering for a broad platform now.  A lot of Microsoft customers like the commercial support behind our products and offerings and demand that of us.  That could be part of what comes into play when organizations choose to do so.  With silverlight, there is no dependency on any framework being on the user's machine at all.  With Moonlight, the mono libraries will have to be there (my understanding -- I'm setting up my environment this week to validate a lot of this).  So linux users who have mono and/or choose to get the installer from Novell will be able to consume silverlight content.  Remember, silverlight is a client technology...

=mobile web
Great point.  Silverlight actually is already working to be mobile for the next versions of windows mobile platforms and embedded spaces.  Plans are early on this, but they are in the works (Major League Baseball has a working demonstration of their mobile platform for premium subscribers that is delivered through silverlight).

-with SVG and canvas I already have...
Not exactly.  Let's first understand the primary intended scenarios for Silverlight...RIA.  SVG itself doesn't enable encapsulation of UI+behavior into re-usable controls, nor does it play well with video today.  Heck even Adobe seemingly dropped primary SVG support (I've heard of SVG tiny but don't know much about it).  Both of these needs are critical for the RIA space.  SVG might be able to get there with XBL, but I think the broad adoption for that remains to be seen.  The primary leader in this space (Flash) leverages something else as well.  The decision for XAML stems from not just silverlight but to provide a broad markup language for documents (fixed and flow), behaviors, UI, media, etc.  One of the main reasons is that XAML provides a close relationship between the elements in the XAML file as well as objects at runtime.  With regard to Canvas, this is v1 elements in Silverlight and represent a subset of the overall windows presentation foundation XAML.  Upcoming versions of Silverlight will support much more than canvas and include richer layout controls (stackpanels, etc.) for developers to leverage.  SVG assets can be re-used in Silverlight using Inkscape (my tool of choice) to convert to an understandable format.  Right now, our tools don't directly import SVG to convert to XAML but there are third parties that do this as well as plugins for leading tools out there.

-vector graphics support
XAML elements can be vector data elements, yes.  Silverlight will understand how to render the vectors.  But XAML also includes other elements of the application and itself is not the only vector element.

-downloadable codec
The codecs that are provided are licensed implementations of the VC-1 standard.  Microsoft isn't able to release the source to those, but providing the binaries is the next best thing.  This is actually on par with other RIA technologies like Flash as well.  Neither is the best for the OSS community, but at least the binaries are there for you to leverage.  This is actually a pretty big deal I think.  VC-1 provides up to 720p HD quality content and is the only shipping technology to deliver that through the RIA technologies.  Having that ability on all platforms is pretty sweet I think.  The codec is something that Moonlight will implement themselves.  The binaries are something they will use in their implementation.  It is a codec like any other codec so I'm not sure there is any more/less exposure to security flaws than codec ABX provided by vendor XYZ.

As to your question to Miguel about offline experiences.  As long as they are delivered "in the browser" that is what I believe/understand the agreement to be at this time.  If the browser is a localhost offering, as long as it is Moonlight and the browser is rendering the content, it is the same as an http://

Alan provided some great links to the content and the Moonlight project.  If you want to see some implementations of Silverlight (on a windows machine) you can view a lot of developer content at http://silverlight.net.  Miguel is also working to get one of the more complex samples from a UI standpoint working -- Zero Gravity -- a game built by a local (phoenix) agency.  I've seen some of Miguel's screenshots and am impressed.

I really have appreciated Miguel's interaction with executives at Microsoft.  It has impacted a lot of thought change.  We've submitted our open source licenses to the OSI for approval (all but 1 of them), we've been releasing a lot of code in the open source community, and with IronRuby continue to show openness in our developer space.  The guys at our open source lab are always cooking up something new as well, so if you follow Sam Ramji or Bill Hilf on http://port25.technet.com.

I hope this helps.  I'm happy to come show some silverlight stuff to the group, but also there will be some stuff at code camp (www.desertcodecamp.com) if you'd like to see some things.  Code Camp is a 100% community run event...by the community, for the community...lots of good sessions there, hope to see you out there.

-th

tim heuer | (602) 405-4567 | im: tim at timheuer.com | blog: http://timheuer.com/blog/


-----Original Message-----
From: plug-devel-bounces at lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us [mailto:plug-devel-bounces at lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us] On Behalf Of Ted Gould
Sent: Wednesday, September 05, 2007 10:12 PM
To: List for Linux development and software engineering discussions.
Subject: Re: [PLUG-Devel] Hi all

On Wed, 2007-09-05 at 20:12 -0700, Tim Heuer wrote:
> Just joined the list after talking with Alan.  I heard some were
> interested in having more of a discussion about the
> Silverlight/Moonlight announcement.  I’m happy to discuss.  I’m also
> happy to come to one of the meetings to discuss (if my travel schedule
> permits).  Bottom line…I’m a developer, love technology, just as
> passionate as everyone else…so let’s discuss!

Nice to meet you Tim, thanks for joining us.  I posted some original questions as Alan was going to aggregate them.  They were:


-- If I Moonlight exists, what's the point of Silverlight?  No, seriously.  Mono runs on Win32, Moonlight will likely run on Win32, I really don't see why anyone would want to run the close source version of something that is 100% compatible with the open source version (which MS has said Moonlight will be).

-- As the web becomes mobile, why should I care about this?  It seems like another canvas widget, but without the general support.  Why is MS reimplementing canvas (with some improvements, I admit) when extending it is probably easier and more likely to get into distribution faster?
It seems like with SVG and Canvas I already have everything in Silverlight... (minus video, but browsers can already do that)

-- I'm confused on the vector graphics support.  Is that through XAML?
I guess I never really saw that as a graphics format, so I'm a touch confused.

-- "Downloadable binary CODEC" -- please explain to me why this isn't the security flaw that ActiveX was.  Especially considering all the Intel processor errors that the OpenBSD guys have found.  Are we going to need install an "x86 ISA lint" into our firewalls to protect users?


I also have an additional question about the downloadable CODECs.  I e-mailed Miguel about it, but I was curious what Microsoft was thinking here also.  He mentioned that the CODECs were only licensed for use with Moonlight within the browser.  Does that mean that I can't use Moonlight in an "disconnected" (no Internet) type situation with video?

        Thanks,
                Ted