Microsoft and Adobe escalate war of words

is this coming from the same company that is currently under investigation from the EU for bundling IE with windows..........

yeh yeh yeh, these barstewards prey on the ignorance of joe public who think that unless this crap is installed their rigs wont work, java runtime's another insidious piece of crap, unfortunately if you want a decent browsing experience you have to put up with this $hite, as pointed out, this crap is installed using any excuse, leaving your security wide open to attack by granting itself full permissions on installation by default grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr !!!!!................................
/rant over, ahhhhh thats better :O)

If the ITV catchup service is anything to go by , silverlight is a hideous pile of satan's jizz. My experience of trying to watch something on it was the most tedious thing I've experienced since I went from dialup.

Buggy , slow , no controls ... it just doesn't work .... Awful awful .

would you really want some operating system WITHOUT ANY browser installed on it? i'd love to see you going to your workplace to download FF install and get back then..
problem is IE can't be uninstalled, after you got some browser you like.

if you want to bash something, try having your favourite music player software and then purchasing (or getting it as a gift) iPod - "hello, iTunes, i hate you!"... :(

anyway, if MS bundles something (and gets sued for it) it doesn't mean that other vendors should do the same (and for some reason do not face any restrictions or fines...)

Right, Microsoft complains...

Any person visiting the Microsoft's page gets nagged several times to install Silverlight, right from the first page they access.

They also paid NBC (if I remember correctly) to stream some big event using only Silverlight so all those people were kind of forced to install it..

How much longer will they take until they just add it to Windows Updates? They already force up your throat the Malicious Software tool and updates for it (even though you don't have the software installed it automatically selects updates for it)?

Silverlight is already on WU as an optional update; it will probably move to Recommended soon and thus be installed by default as with other Recommended updates.

As a developer, you do want the run-times to be installed already - saving setup complexity/size, installation steps, possible reboots, and so on...

As a user I might not like it but unless developers use just the bog-standard functionality and not depend on anything new there's no other solution.

If anything MS should push down new technologies to all older Operating Systems in order them to be used.

You don't want to write something that only works on 7 or even Vista no matter how better it is.

I've been streaming movies from Netflix using Silverlight for the past few months and it works great! On both my PC and my Mac.

I'm also an software developer using Silverlight for a new site. From a .NET developer's standpoint, Silverlight is hand-down a better development platform than Flash.

Netflix on demand is my new god, and they are using Silverlight very well to get the job done. Flash, on the other hand, is the worst plague to hit internet websites since javascripting. I swear, every new version just makes webpages run worse and worse

by a prompt to install Silverlite before using the website. No wonder they have 100 million downloads - you can't use Microsoft's website unless you have it installed.

I just want to comment on the bundling part. I can still download flash, or reader separate from everything. The time I chose to use Air I liked it because the download & install of Reader was faster. The thing that gets on my nerves though is the damn toolbars.. MSN, Google, Yahoo... I DONT WANT A FRIGGIN TOOLBAR! Why is it bundled in java? yeah yeah sponsorship.. but at least leave it unchecked by default. And how ironic is it that M$ whines about bundling. IE, WMP, defrag, firewall, built in zip... I know I'm missing a bunch. And now nearly every OEM bundles in M$ Office "60 day trial" or "29 runs left..." edition.

Ugh. I still dont have silverlight. Its just one more thing that would run an updater in the background as if we need any more of those. "My computer is slow waaa" - "You have updaters for quicktime, java, norton, itunes, spysweeper ..... all running in the background!"

joined together to stop Javascript doing what AIR or Silverfish does doesnt mean I have to polute my computer with either of them.
We could have had this 5 years ago with JS and we're supposed to be grateful to them for making us pay (one way or another) for something we could have had for free without them??

Some friends here mention that they forced to install Silverlight; I would like to ask them what will happen if they did not install flash, you see the same story happen.
We should see these things as professional aspect not emotional, having problem with MS or we hate them because they are making $ or any other emotional feeling, doesn’t allow us to blame everything. We should let people of world decide what they like and what they don’t like, if they like to use Firefox with Silverlight or they prefer to use Flash integrated into IE. This is a matter of time we understand.

I use silverlight (forcefully) to watch sky on my computer. I live in the UK (Where the BBC charge £146 a year because you have a TV!) so for me its been a good thing. With http://tvcatchup.com/ & been able watch my parents Sky through the wibble web i dont need an aerial connected to a TV. I just project it through a 1080p projector onto my wall/screen and dont have to worry about Mr TV man coming round ruining my day. All legal :)

As for silverlight, Works great for me. THe thing i like is when i project it onto my wall/screen i can full size it and it will stay full screen even when i use my laptop. Its suprising how many things turn off full screen when you use the laptop. Very annoying.

I am amazed at the Adobe boys on here, the Olympics were broadcast in silverlight and it worked fine. My complaint is that when you go to MS website they do bug you to death But the product does work and it works well. And unlike adobe you can MS does support it products where as I spent the last week trying to get CS3, yes we have CS4, but the person was in the middle of a project

Silverlight will win out in the end. Its simply a far better and more powerful platform. I have had my browser hung countless times thanks to Flash related crashes, not to mention several critical security patches needed for Flash to stop my box being owned, and visit lots of sites that pop up Flash related script errors - which is really irritating. And no 64 bit support 9 years after Windows was released in a 64 bit Native version (That's about 3 years before Linux got full 64 bit support in kernel 2.6 for those that care). That just sucks so much that they couldnt be bothered to provide basic support for 64 bit browsers over nearly a decade.

Silverlight on the other hand is updated in the background by Windows Update and has full 64 bit support out of the box. And it works. No crashes, no failures, no impact. It just does what it is supposed to. And it uses Microsoft's development environments too which are the best in the business.

The writing is on the wall for Flash...

Don't know if it's possible, but could an open source alternative be produced? I know Mozilla is plugging for something along the lines of this now, as pointed out in this inq article:
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/649/1050649/mozilla-champions-open-source-web-video

I'm sure it would be a tough sell at first, but if you can convince the major users of either of the above products that something that's entirely in their own control would be better for them, that would pretty much put an end to this fiasco, no?

I've been a .NET developer for 4 years and have always thought highly of microsoft's dev framework. Silverlight (or Silvershite) as we call it in the office is crap.

XAML is far too awkward and forces you to use tables to layout your controls (against every frickin web standard). There is also no design view and if you want to create animations you need to purchase a second development tool - MS Blend 2. Very crafty M$.

Flash is an infinitely superior product

Foxit pwns adobe reader. Try it