Analysis: How Moonlight 2.0 Fits into Novell's Linux and Open Source Plans (Linux.com) [LWN.net]

Over at Linux.com, Todd R. Weiss analyzes Moonlight, looking at how it fits into Novell's (and Microsoft's) plans. "Creating an open source version of Silverlight became important to Novell two years ago, said Joseph Hill, Novell's product manager for the Mono and Moonlight 2.0 projects. That's when Microsoft announced that it would be using its .Net development environment to create Silverlight content, Hill said. That was important to Novell, he said, because millions of .Net developers were already out there and could then use Silverlight to add rich Web features. That scenario meant that Linux desktop users would ultimately be left in the cold because all of that .Net-created content wouldn't be optimized to give them the same rich experiences. And when Microsoft said it wouldn't build Silverlight and .Net tools for Linux, Novell worked out an arrangement with Microsoft to provide those pieces, by creating the Moonlight project."

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The third option

Posted Aug 25, 2009 3:46 UTC (Tue) by DOT (subscriber, #58786) [Link]

The article is basically Microsoft vs Flash. However, there is a third player in town, much more likely to take over in the end: HTML 5.

What do you think will be more successful: a web application framework created and implemented by Microsoft, a web application framework created and implemented by Adobe, or a web application framework created and implemented by Microsoft, Google, Apple, Mozilla, Nokia and a whole lot more companies?

The third option

Posted Aug 25, 2009 6:15 UTC (Tue) by nikanth (guest, #50093) [Link]

In fact HTML5 versus Flash is a closer competition than moonlight Vs Flash! Moonlight is similar to Java Applets than Flash

The third option

Posted Aug 25, 2009 6:21 UTC (Tue) by Los__D (guest, #15263) [Link]

In which way is Moonlight/Silverlight closer to Java Applets?

Silverlight reminds me more of Flex (a way of creating Flash UIs) than anything else, as both describe the user interface in similar ways (using XML dialects).

The third option

Posted Aug 25, 2009 6:27 UTC (Tue) by nikanth (guest, #50093) [Link]

Oh, yes! Moonlight is very similar to flex than applets. But what I meant was that the omni-present tiny flash animations in the web are created using Macromedia Flash IDE/designer, which is missing for moonlight. By flash I meant those time-line based animations, not the purely programmed stuff aka flex.

The third option

Posted Aug 25, 2009 6:39 UTC (Tue) by Los__D (guest, #15263) [Link]

Ah, in that way!

But isn't Expression Blend pretty similar (in terms of features) to the Flash IDE, including timelines?

I'm not sure if Moonlight have Silverlight's built-in timelines yet, though, with Silverlight 2 support still being pretty incomplete and all.

Weak Argument

Posted Aug 25, 2009 4:54 UTC (Tue) by pjhacnau (subscriber, #4223) [Link]

So all us poor Linux users are going to miss out on this great content?

Sounds awfully similar to the arguments I was hearing 10-11 years ago when it was ActiveX which was going to pull World+dog into Microsoft's orbit as no other browser platform than IE would be able to handle the great content being made with ActiveX.

If you want to tell me that Moonlight/Silverlight is technically a great platform, and why it is, I'll listen. If you want to give me concrete examples of things people can create/have created with it, I'll go take a look. And I'll compare to what you can do with Flash, or HTML5+javascript, or even HTLM4+javascript. If you want to warn me about all this "great stuff" I'll "miss out" on, I'll yawn and move on.

Weak Argument

Posted Aug 25, 2009 6:20 UTC (Tue) by nas (subscriber, #17) [Link]

Hopefully some of the corporate people stuck with IE6 + proprietary ActiveX/HTML/JS apps will think carefully about the risks of locking yourself in to a single vendor.

Weak Argument

Posted Aug 25, 2009 22:14 UTC (Tue) by job (guest, #670) [Link]

Yup. Much like OfficeOpenXML will be over us all so we'd better welcome it over OpenDocument, because Microsoft will never implement the latter. Except they did, because customers demanded it. Just like they did with this thing called "the web" a couple of years ago.