Microsoft has released beta 2.0 of
Silverlight 2.0, complete with a Go-Live license that
permits commercial deployments for those sufficiently
brave.
Silverlight 2.0 is the make-or-break release for
Microsoft's would-be Flash killer,
since it includes the
.NET runtime. While
.NET has succeeded as a web platform, it has never been
fully convincing on the desktop. The runtime is huge and can
be troublesome to install, the
Windows Forms GUI framework is slow and ugly, and the
Windows-only platform requirement is an increasing burden as
the Mac gains market share.
Silverlight solves all three problems. The GUI framework
is
Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), based on an XML
layout language called XAML. The runtime is under 5MB,
delivered as a browser plug-in. Cross-platform is limited,
but includes Intel Mac so meets the most pressing need.
However, Microsoft is racing against Adobe Systems, whose
mature Flash
client covers the same territory. The pace of
Silverlight development is energetic, but raises concerns
that too many bugs may slip through.
I experienced this first-hand when installing the beta 2.0
development tools. Keeping Visual Studio 2008 running sweetly
with all Microsoft's latest add-ons has become arduous. The
Silverlight tools beta interacts with the Visual Studio
2008 Service Pack (SP)1 beta; you have to scrutinize the
release notes in detail and even then the install may fail and
require manual fixing. This is the kind of deployment nightmare
that
Silverlight aims to fix for end users