Comments on: Windows Phone 7 – Episode #8 of JXLTV

By: Phillip Kerman

Phillip Kerman — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 22:53:44 +0000

Pretty good. I’ll only point out things with which I don’t agree.

I’m not sure “Silverlight lite” is really a dig on Flash lite. I’d speculate that 90% of the .net dudes who might use Silverlight probably haven’t even heard of Flashlite (let alone all the capabilities of Flash). In my opinion, it’s not some 60% threshold that will be a tipping point. Rather, there are a bunch of .net dudes who would never consider Flash and are (rightly) excited about Silverlight. Those folks are doing stuff with Silverlight (some percentage of it is cool too).

I don’t see much impact on Flash/Flex projects. Maybe some, but for the most part, this is new work. Ultimately, it still helps “programmers” (whether they’re flash heads or not). This is the same for all the hype/energy behind HTML5. Great for programmers.

Anyway, I was interested in seeing the better and better workflow tools for Silverlight. With all due respect to some good additions to Adobe’s tools–overall, I think they’re bloated and unstable.

By: Matthew Fabb

Matthew Fabb — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 18:12:26 +0000

From what I’ve read Silverlight Mobile has *most* of the functionality found in the Silverlight plugin, it’s just a few features here and there that are turned off. It only becomes a deal breaker if you need one of the features in the app that you’re building. Also unfortunately, from what I’ve read, Microsoft seems to be trying to hide the fact that there’s differences, for a better marketing push. So from what I’ve seen it’s not clear where the differences are except when you go digging around the documentation between the plugin and mobile apps. So mainly the danger is expecting a Silverlight app to do something and discover while in development that a feature isn’t available for mobile apps.

As for the stragedy of Microsoft versus Adobe, Microsoft’s stradegy is going to sink or swim based on the success of Windows Phone 7. Microsoft might be doing some cool things for Windows Phone 7, but so was Palm for the Palm Pre.

Short-term Adobe’s current stragedy is riding on the success of Android and long term making apps for multiple platforms. Even if Adobe just pulls off getting mobile AIR on just Android and RIM’s Blackberry, that will be pretty big.

That said, while I’ve paid close attention to the mobile world, just as I’m paying attention to Silverlight (with 1 month or 2 of actual development in Silverlight version 2) all my work continues to be for web apps targeting the desktop.

By: JesterXL

JesterXL — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 17:18:16 +0000

@Earl “It’s my goal to create cool shit by any means necessary” <– MINE TOO!

Build custom charts to show thousands of data points, and suddenly, you'll either A) wish you were smart enough to know how to utilize PixelBender for multi-threading via Shaders or B) wish you were using Silverlight since it has multi-threading in the language itself.

To be fair, a lot of the early Silverlight bashing was valid; it was pretty dumb. Not anymore. They're doing some cool stuff. Hell, even 1.0 you could download, install, and use fonts… in a web browser. HOT!

By: Earl Ferguson

Earl Ferguson — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 17:12:14 +0000

I really like your perspective on this. You hear a lot of flash fanboys saying “hey this is how much Silverlight sucks” and that’s it. Instead of also saying hey this how Silverlight (or ajax) is progressing the RIA industry and this is how it’s doing things better then Flash. Like you, I think it’s about fun. The flash platform is fun as hell to me right now. But that might not always be the case. I hope it is, but who knows. It’s my goal to create cool shit by any means necessary.

By: JesterXL

JesterXL — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 16:36:17 +0000

@adamcodes Thanks for the recommendation Adam, I’ll check it out! I liked Shiner’s Bock, and Samuel Adam’s Double Bock (and Triple Bock). I’ve had 3 so far, so I don’t think I got a skunked one, and actually the 2nd wasn’t so bad. That said, I won’t be buying it again.

You’re the 2nd person to highly recommend me to get a liquid bread beer; now I really want one (and I don’t care it’s summer, I’ll drink Stout in 100+ degree weather; BRING IT!)