Microsoft's Silverlight goes fourth tomorrow

Microsoft will release Silverlight 4 tomorrow, less than a year after launching version 3 of the company’s wannabe Adobe Flash killer. The code is in fact set to land 48 hours after Microsoft "launched" Silverlight 4 on Tuesday. The firm’s .NET developer platform veep Scott Guthrie told The Register last week that the latest …

[ThomH]

Don't want

So it's like Flash — that thing everyone seems to want to get rid of — but with a greatly increased chance of security problems* and barely any reason to install it in the first place?

* in that it's designed to have out-of-sandbox access to things; if you can find a way to escalate your privilege then it nicely abstracts all the OS-specific data mining you may want to do next.

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone...

...actually use Slivershite? With HTML5 coming along, it would seem more prudent to stick with a cross-platform technology rather than limit oneself with a lock-in, proprietary platform.

[Lee Dowling]

Version 4?

Hell, either time moves fast or I just don't care. I think it's the latter. Four versions of this junk? Really? I run networks and have yet to install it on any of the machines I control. Once had a bit of software that demanded Silverlight, to draw a webpage with four links on it with a background image - we told the manufacturer that we'd buy when they got rid of the Silverlight requirement.

I never watched ITV Player until they scrapped it for some basic Flash either. I think that 60% saturation must be "trojan" installations by unsuspecting users who think they "have to" have it based on what pops up when they get their Windows Updates. That's probably why MS can't afford to move over their own sites to it either - they'd lose a large chunk of their customer base at a time when they are being made to push alternative browsers and web standards.

[Wila]

Same as internet explorer usage these days?

Wasn't the Internet explorer usage also close to 60% these days?

So in my naive simplistic understanding that would mean that Microsoft believes that silverlight is installed on pretty much 100% of all computers using internet explorer as their primary browser?

I don't think that is going to be true.

As always statistics can be bend any way you like them to be...

[Inachu]

No!!!!!!!!!

I can already see people with version 4 installed will start seeing websites that put targeted ads onto their taskbar.

Next there will be silvelight viruses that will have no other purpose than to fill up your taskbar and make explorer.exe crash repeatedly over and over.......

Grrrr.

[paulc]

Churn, Churn Churn...

all done really to keep moonlight behind in the implementation stakes... meanwhile, Microsoft will claim Silverlight to be cross-platform because there's moonlight on Linux, but moonlight will always be one step behind and websites using Silverlight will not render correctly on moonlight if at all...

[M Gale]

Gigatons of Fail

Running things outside of a sandboxed environment? Did they learn nothing from the unholy debacle that is ActiveX? Mind you, this is Microsoft we're on about...

..and when do we get the Linux version of Silverlight, so I can decide not to download it? No, not Mono or Moonlight or some other not-quite-compatible equivalent. Silverlight.

What's that, never? Ah well. Makes bugger all difference to me anyway.

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly!

Exactly! I was reading this and thinking "Active X all over again". I haven't installed one version of this yet, nor do I plan to. Access the clipboard? Read and write files? give it ten years and it will be a bad memory.

[Anonymous Coward]

Cool, been waiting for this

Of course, these days, anything Microsoft does will be met with disdain. Silverlight 4 is a step in the right direction for mobile enablement. Developing for iCrap and Android is not for faint of heart, at least MS is trying to address that.

[Inachu]

My prediction.

I predict that silverlight will be just as bad as the old expired program called:

Norton Crash Guard.

[Al Jones]

Any sign of a 64-bit client?

I run 64-bit Windows 7, and there are a couple of desktop "gadgets" that I like to use that are written in Silverlight. But because Silverlight is 32-bit only, the gadgets don't run on 64-bit Windows by default. You have to know how to kill the default 64-bit sidebar process and manually start the 32-bit version before your Silverlight gadget will run. (At least in Windows 7, the desktop remembers that you need the 32-bit version after a reboot, so that you don't have to do this every time you reboot).

Having said that, it looks as though "gadgets" have become yet another orphaned MS technology that hardly anyone supports any more.