What do you think will be the level of usage of Silverlight 1 year from now? [closed]

Question

There is a lot of buzz about Microsoft Silverlight, especially after the Olympics. Also H264 will be supported in a future version. Where do you think Silverlight will be 1 year from now?

Answer 1

They were saying they were getting 1.5 million downloads per day back in March 2008, and that was before the Olympics and the Democratic National Convention. So, unless my math is off, that's more than 4 people.

I'd expect to see it show up as a recommended Windows update, and possible included with IE8 or something in the future.

Answer 2

At best, in the same place at Flash. Now, how many of you do Flash enterprise applications? Does Google do flash applications? or SalesForce.com? Oracle? or any other major on demand application provider?

In my opinion, even if it kills off Flash, it will still be largely irrelevant for the types of applications we write everyday.

Answer 3

In a year it will still be a minority of content, but the installed base will be large enough that mainstream projects will be considering it as a viable alternative to Flash. Until they survey the pool of available, talented designers familiar with it.

Answer 4

Most .NET developers I work with have been shying away from Silverlight.

Right now it seems more like a novelty than a development platform.

Answer 5

A year from now, the number of people with the runtime installed will still be a fairly small minority!

I suspect that choosing Silverlight will still be a barrier to people using your stuff for a long while to come.

Answer 6

100% more.

(so about 4 people)

Answer 7

Considering NBC has already dropped Silverlight and are using Flash again for NFL telecasts, I don't see a healthy future for Microsoft's platform.

Do they even have any other partners using it? I know WWE was one of their partners but they barely use it on their own website.

EDIT - not sure if it's true or not but this guy says that the decision to go with Flash was the NFL's and not NBC's. Either way still doesn't look good for the MS platform.

Answer 8

I think that as long as the Moonlight project is successful that we'll see Silverlight become significant competition for Flash.

Silverlight is still in its infancy - 1.0 had next to nothing in it. Version 2 is in beta now, and that adds lots of common user controls that developers need to write applications.

Answer 9

They really got a huge bump with the Olympics as far as getting it installed on machines. It will be interesting to see how much developer buy in they can gather. It's a tough sell for front end web people because it's a complete toolset change. I know the midteir/WPF people like it because it's closer to their normal .NET toolset, but they're not usually the ones doing web design.

IMHO, things like HTML5 and Gears are where many people are going to go.

Answer 10

I think that it will grow, but MSFT will need to do more deals like they did with the Olympics. Hooking up with CBS/NCAA on the March Madness broadcasts would be worth whatever millions they could throw at it.

Answer 11

Silverlight 1 Vs Silverlight 2:

Silverlight 2 is expected to be out in the next few months (they used to say in August 2008 until ... August ended. In September they say October.), so MS will probably be promoting Silverlight 2.1 (or whatever upgrade to Silerlight 2) in a year's time, and Silverlight 1.0 will likely have no developer share at all, and no momentum.

Silverlight Vs Javascript-based platforms:

Google Chrome (and the upcoming Firefox 2.1) promise an order of magnitude better performance in JavaScript. We haven't seen the best from them yet. MS will have to improve IE's JavaScript speeds, though who knows when they'll be able to ship that (in IE 9 maybe?).

I think that it will be a few more years yet before the clear winners emerge from the fray.

Answer 12

The installation barrier will be a problem until it ships with Windows by default. But even then developers will only support the established Flash. Considering certain mobile platforms have neither Flash nor Silverlight, it's best to back the one more likely to be ported to all platforms, and that's the dominant Flash.

In the end Javascript + SVG will almost certainly win out over these vendor produced solutions. But within a year I'd be surprised if any significant amount of development is done with Silverlight. Flash has too much momentum and MS is too late to the game with nothing sufficiently compelling.