[PLUG-Devel] Hi all

Thu Sep 6 00:29:09 MST 2007

As to who will choose moonlight/sivleright, I think that will vary.  Will my mother-in-law who just bought a new mac (or windows machine for that matter), "choose" moonlight/silverlight?  No, I think she'll visit entertainment tonight online, visit some content and get prompted to install a plugin.  If you're a Moonlight preferenced, tech savvy user, then you'd install moonlight.  I'm not sure what the Moonlight story on Windows is actually...

Mobile devices do get upgraded less, for sure (especially in the US because we are tied to carriers).  The iPhone has brought new meaning to user experiences on mobile platforms...which is a good thing...and that has challenged everyone (including Java with JavaFX) to think differently.  We're (MSFT) are doing the same.

As far as windows media player on the web...you could use it but not get x-plat for it.  Silverlight becomes a sweet spot for those organizations that have an investment in windows media streaming services especially...they don't have to re-encode to a lower quality and can actually get higher quality for premium content.  To people like MLB, Netflix, WWE, etc. that is important.  To the "youtube" video type things, it may not be.  But Silverlight delivers a x-play windows media codec (the media supported is WMV, WMA and MP3).

XAML isn't just for vector, so you are absolutely right.  XAML represents application+markup.  It contains vector, other markup and behaviors...it is much more than just vector rendering.

For the process I use for using SVG assets in XAML (or converting them I should say) you can check my blog for a screencast I did recently.  Basically open SVG file in Inkscape, save as PDF.  Microsoft's expression tools can import PDF (which is essentially the same format as .AI) into their design tools and emit XAML.  There are other vendors making this process simpler (you can search for tools) and also some doing some Flash to XAML conversions (http://theconverted.ca).  The SVG document itself isn't directly supported, but you can get re-use out of those assets with simple conversion.  I hope that makes sense.

Codecs -- always a tough one.  With the goal of keeping the plugin size small, there are some tradeoffs.  These are the same tradeoffs anyone faces.  With a goal of Silverlight to deliver great rich media experiences via the web and serve customers with streaming services, we made a choice.  We chose a video standard that had high quality capabilities and 2 audio formats.  The more we add (in addition to licensing concerns) the more we increase the size.  And if Microsoft included OGG or other OSS platforms here, I'd pose the same question back to you... How do I know I got the good ones?  How do I know what good is?  How do I know there isn't a man in the middle?

720p - memory/processor power is key here of course for higher quality content.  I guess I was making a point that Silverlight is the only shipping technology now to deliver an in browser HD experience.  Others will absolutely come.  It is just a great starting point for us in a v1 product.

Mac and PPC binaries -- good question, I'll research.
Out of browser experiences for Moonlight -- I don't know, but will research.

Thanks for the questions Ted!

-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: Thursday, September 06, 2007 12:01 AM
To: List for Linux development and software engineering discussions.
Subject: Re: [PLUG-Devel] Hi all

On Wed, 2007-09-05 at 23:02 -0700, Tim Heuer wrote:
> -what's the point of silverlight...
> It's really about choice in the rich internet application space (RIA).

I didn't realize this space was big enough to have it's own acronym ;)

> 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.

So, in a nutshell, you'd expect Silverlight to be used by everyone who's already a Microsoft Developer/Partner (I can't remember the current
term) but Moonlight by everyone else?

Is there a reason that someone would choose Silverlight over Moonlight on a Mac?

> 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).

I guess my issue here is upgrades.  Mobile devices get upgraded less, and simply have less content on them.  It seems a little bit counter intuitive to be introducing a new application framework on a relatively static and stable platform.  I think Mark Cuban recently referred to the Internet as "boring", but that's a good thing because it is a stable development platform.  It allows your washer and dryer to have a defined amount of implementation.

> -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).

SVG does support that as much as any AJAX application can.  There are reusable widget libraries for SVG available.  It does not play video without using object embedding, but that's what Windows Media Player is for, right? ;)

> 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.

No offense, but I think that this provides to my point that XAML is an odd choice for a vector graphics format.  It seems more like an application representation format (like XUL) than a graphics format.  It can represent graphics, but that seems like a side light to what it's goals are.

> 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.

Now, this is interesting to me :)

So one can "drop in" their SVG documents onto a Silverlight canvas?  I can't find any documentation on this.  Do you know how much of SVG is supported?  Filters, blending, etc.  Does this mean that IE7 has SVG support using Silverlight (finally)?

> 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.

Yeah, I think that is great that Microsoft is providing them at all, but I'm still a little bit concerned.  I hope that this is something that'll grow into a better thing overall -- it's definitely not perfect.  Then again, there is little that is perfect in the media CODEC space.

Do you think there is a chance of getting OGG support into Silverlight?
Perhaps Dirac?  These would provide an easier solution to implement on the Open Source side of things.  They would also reduce Microsoft's licensing costs to people like the MPEG LA.

> 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.

No offense, but when you're implementing media CODECs in software the only limitation to resolution is memory and processor power.  I'm really surprised that it isn't be marketed as 1080p -- in theory it should work unless someone coded a limitation in.

> 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.

I think the concern is more the "live download" of them.  The Internet is a very scary place.  How do I know I got the good ones?  How do I know what good is?  How do I know there isn't a man in the middle?  I think these were all issues when ActiveX came out.

Also, I noticed that in the Mac support it was mentioned that there would be PowerPC and Intel support.  But, the Novell guys are saying x86 and x86-64 support for the CODECs.  Any chance of MS providing PPC binaries for the CODECs?

> 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://

This is odd to me.  Do you by chance know why this was done?  Why wouldn't MS want all Moonlight apps running the CODECs?  I'm just a touch confused on MS's motivation here.

        Thanks,
                Ted