Microsoft is presenting Silverlight as a browser plug-in that can show high-definition video on both PCs and Macs using VC-1, a version of Microsoft’s WMV technology standardised for HD DVD and Blu-ray discs. But this is simply the thin end of a very ambitious wedge. It could also transform website development and enable a new generation of rich internet applications (RIAs) that work both online and on the desktop.
In many respects, Silverlight puts Microsoft on a collision course with Adobe, which has similar ambitions. Adobe’s strategy is based on Flash and Apollo, a program in its infancy.
Silverlight enables programmers to deploy a desktop application on the web, as an RIA, using the same XML user interface code. Apollo is a run-time module that will enable programmers to run a web application (developed using Flash, Flex, HTML, JavaScript and Ajax) on the desktop. Which you choose depends on where you start and where you want to go. Users benefit either way.
But Silverlight is just the new name for WPF/E, or Windows Programming Foundation Everywhere. WPF is the new way of developing user interfaces in Windows Vista, and is supported in XP via the Net 3.0 Framework. WPF/E provides a way of deploying powerful Vista-style programs across a network via Internet Explorer, Firefox and Apple Safari browsers. These RIAs can be deployed on Linux servers, says Microsoft.
WPF also provides a better way for web designers and developers to work together. Instead of just producing artwork, designers can create real interfaces with buttons and other controls. The designer can then give the programmer the XML (or XAML) code for use in Microsoft’s development system, Visual Studio.
To generate XAML from graphics, Microsoft has launched its own range of creative tools in the Expression Suite, based on its takeover of a Hong Kong software developer, Creature House, in 2003.
Adobe owns the creative market with PhotoShop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver and the likes, the way Microsoft owns the business desktop with Office. But Microsoft hopes to get a toehold by offering a more powerful way of working and by leveraging its Windows-based programming system.
The move to WPF and XAML should benefit the Windows programming world, especially inside large companies with intranets. Whether it will be adopted elsewhere is open to considerable doubt. But it could nonetheless put Adobe under added pressure, especially if it’s forced to reduce its high prices. — Guardian Unlimited Â