Comments on: Microsoft Silverlight – Love it or hate it?

By: Ashlea Medel

Ashlea Medel — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 03:08:08 +0000

Hi, I found this blog article while searching for help with fixing Microsoft Silverlight. I have recently switched browsers from Chrome to Internet Explorer 7. Now I seem to have a problem with loading sites that have Microsoft Silverlight. Every time I go on a site that requires Microsoft Silverlight, the page doesn’t load and I get a “npctrl.dll” error. I cannot seem to find out how to fix it. Any help getting Microsoft Silverlight to work is greatly appreciated! Thanks

By: Rich C

Rich C — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 09:56:58 +0000

@Guy: The player works far better on Mac than their silly Flip4Mac plugin. When I can write ONE piece of code that works EXACTLY the same on IE, FF and Safari, on Mac and Windows, with no browser sniffing or stupid Javascript tricks, I’ll call it what it is: cross-platform.

@Jim: No, they are not going to release Visual Studio on the Mac; they need something to differentiate Windows as a “superior” platform. Any expectations you may have in that regard are just plain silly. Besides, Microsoft claims you can develop for Silverlight on Notepad, so why not on TextEdit?

Besides, a developer who creates an all-Flash website is no better than one who creates an all Silverlight site.

What is evil is trying to convince people that Silverlight is better because its files can be read by search engines. What is evil is Google trying to find ways to index all-Flash sites. Leave them in the gutter until people realize what Flash (and Silverlight) is for and start making websites in HTML/CSS (and Javascript) again.

By: Jim

Jim — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 21:49:43 +0000

@Guy : I couldn’t agree more. From what I have seen so far their agenda is far from clear cut. When Microsoft start releasing some products that are truly cross-platform and open source (heaven forbid!) then I may have a better view of them. Until that day comes, I’m supporting the underdog!

Thanks for your comment!

By: guy thomas

guy thomas — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 20:37:34 +0000

Silverlight is Microsoft’s attempt to completely bypass the W3C. It has been developed purely on top of an OS agenda- i.e. we want to own the web so lets make the web only work with a M$ operating system. Oh, wait a minute, Silversh1te is cross platform – which in reality means it will work fully on a M$ OS with 4gb ram and a state of the art graphics card, and it will partially work with OSX.

The kind of developers I can see embracing Silversh1te are the web developers who only develop for IE and have never heard about or don’t care about the W3C. If there was a web developer’s guild, these people would be disbarred or never allowed to join.

Please don’t hurt the web, Silverlite is evil.

By: Jim

Jim — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 06:59:01 +0000

Thanks Jerino, I took a look at the hardrock site and it’s not too bad. Doesn’t blow me away but it’s better than “Silverlight minesweeper” etc.

I didn’t mean to come across a negative in the post, just that I am very cautious about getting excited about anything Microsoft. I guess I question their motives. When something has potential and is driven by a passion for the product that’s great. Let’s hope the Microsoft Silverlight experience will be better than the IE experience and (dare I say it) the Microsoft Office experience.

Thanks again for your reply

By: Jerino

Jerino — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 04:14:20 +0000

I plan to use SilverLight hard core but haven’t quite got both feet in there mostly b/c it’s still beta 2. It’s OK to take a wait & see approach on M$ stuff b/c it’s never difficult to pick up their tricks later on.

This thing is too new to find an example showing its full blown potential. You can try “http://memorabilia.hardrock.com/”. I consider that site gimmicky and trivial, but a nice start nonetheless.

If you wanna learn it, try “SilverLight.Net”. Lots of “how to” videos there.

By: Jim

Jim — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 19:04:48 +0000

That’s cool, like I said I am happy to be wrong, I just have not seen any working examples of Silverlight solutions that couldn’t be done just as easily with other technology.

I take it from your comment you use Silverlight, do you have any examples (either your own or other peoples) that could persuade me?

Cheers,

Jim

By: Jerino

Jerino — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 18:40:36 +0000

“Until the stats say >75% of people have Silverlight I cannot justify developing sites in it, it’s just not worth it.”

That’s not a big deal. If I were to build a site in SilverLight or Flash, I’d add a note on the front page to remind users to install the plug in at first, and a friendly installation URL. The benefit of replacing HTML/JAVASCRIPT/CSS w/ more robust SilverLight and Flash is TOO GOOD AN OFFER TO REFUSE.