SilverLight, Microsoft Expression, & Visual Studio bring RIA's to life

Microsoft today announced Silverlight, a new cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of media experiences and Rich Interactive Internet Applications (RIAs) for the Web.

Early supporters of the new platform include Akamai Technologies Inc., Brightcove Inc., Eyeblaster Inc., Limelight Networks, Major League Baseball and Netflix Inc.

The real story here is the total solution; Microsoft Expression tools for web designers, Visual Studio for web developers, and Silverlight for cross web browser and cross platform support. The combination of great tools for building applications and Silverlight for cross platform distribution creates real synergy for developers, web site owners, and users.

Richard MacManus points out that Silverlight directly competes with Adobe's Flash. Richard says "The world of RIAs is increasing in importance, as Internet users seek out better "experiences" - both in the browser and outside it, and both online and offline. While Google is happy to utilize Ajax in the browser as its RIA weapon of choice, Microsoft and Adobe are busy battling it out in the 'richer' products - which either extend the browser or utilize the desktop."

TechMeme has aggregated lots of news stories and blogs on the Silverlight announcement.  Ryan Stewart at ZD/Net says "Silverlight finally gives Microsoft an easy web video solution. The Silverlight plugin runs on Mac and Windows, and supports all of the major browsers. It leverages the VC-1 codec which powers Windows Media and also has a fairly robust infrastructure that fits well into Microsoft's platform. For one thing, when you buy IIS, you have all the tools you need to encode and stream Windows Media Files. In addition, using VC-1 gets you a lot of third party tools. As an added bonus, its also supported by HD DVD and Blu-ray. The DRM capabilities of Windows Media are also a fairly well known commodity. "

Silverlight enhances the user experience. Expression Studio enhances the web designer's experience. There are four tools in the Expression family focused on web designers. The neat thing about all these tools is how they work together in a work-flow pattern, and share the same object structures so that objects can be copied to other tools like Visual Studio, Word, PowerPoint, etc.

• Expression Design is a professional illustration, painting, and graphic designer for creating WYSIWYG Web graphics.
• Expression Blend is a professional tool for creating rich user interfaces for Web and Client applications. It seamlessly integrates with the Graphic Designer and Visual Studio.
• Expression Web is a professional tool for creating sophisticated standards-based Web sites, using advanced CSS tools that create fully compliant XHTML code.
• Expression Media is a professional asset management tool to visually catalog and organize all your digital assets.

There are likely to be more announcements at MIX 07 in Las Vegas starting April 29th. The event is sold out. I will be there and will file a report here.

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Comments

[John Dowdell]

"a new cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of media experiences and Rich Interactive Applications (RIAs) for the Web."

Hi Don, "RIA" actually stands for "Rich Internet Applications". The term was created five years ago last month. I'm not sure why there are so many typos across the web on this acronym today.
http://weblogs.macromedia.com/jd/archives/2005/03/ria_definition.cfm

(The "next generation" line here is intended to refer to "next generation of MS tech", rather than "next generation of web tech", right?)

jd/adobe

[Don Dodge]

John, Thanks for link to the RIA definition. I have seen RIA used both ways with the "I" sometimes "Internet" and other times "Interactive". Sort of like RSS...Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication. There are probably others.

Jeremy Allaire is a smart guy, and a friend, so I will go with his definition. Rich Internet Applications it is.

As for the "next generation" statement...it could be both the next generation of Microsoft technology, and the next generation of RIA. Web video technology is far from complete...there will be several more generations.

I do get your meaning and I did chuckle when I read it. Point for you. :-)

[Greg]

Does cross-platform mean just windows and mac?

[Don Dodge]

Greg, Yes Silverlight supports Windows and Mac on the desktop. It also suppports IE, Firefox, and Safari browsers.

From Tim Sneath's blog: Silverlight is both client- and server-agnostic. There's no difference between the Macintosh and PC runtimes; you don't need any Microsoft software on the server if you don't want to - you can deliver a great Silverlight experience from an Apache / Linux server to a Mac OS 10.4 client.

Does Linux have meaningful market share on the desktop? My guess is around 2% but I really don't know. Server share is another matter of course. But, when releasing desktop software companies need to think about support costs for multiple OS...and market share.

[Ian Smith]

Don,

For sure Silverlight is exciting. The key to success for Microsoft will be their ability to build a creative design social network around this platform and draw the Adobe (Flex) followers with them. And Silverlight so much better than its IT-centric name of WPF/e.

I'm building a consumer-aided design platform using this technology - I think this might be the start of CAD 2.0!

[Steve]

I develop using everything from c# to js but will never use any MS specific web technology on the client. I don’t use their themes, master pages, nor ide for web graphic design content (only backend code). I use Dreamweaver, VS2005, & Textpad for each of what they are good at. MS seems incapable of producing products that are intelligent in their final implementation. Take a peek at the html source that .net produces… You would think it was done w/FrontPage 98… Instead of having a master stylesheet, it embeds each tag w/specific style info: how poor.

Also, if ms expects users to install some sort of activeX (activeSilverWeb or whatever) that it produced, it is missing the point. JS, Ajax, etc… allows users to expand capabilities w/o plug-ins. I hate Flash, and don’t use it. Who in their right mind would install any ms plug-in into a browser giving hackers yet another avenue to hack your box?