Richard Davies wrote: The UK has a good crop of technology pioneers in cloud computing - for example ElasticHosts, FlexiScale, Flexiant, OnApp - and also some strong government initiatives such as G-Cloud.
We will have to see whether this kind of technical leadership converts into swift mass-market adoption or not.
In many cases, the end of the year gives you time to step back and take stock of the last 12 months. This is when many of us take a hard look at what worked and what did not, complete performance reviews, and formulate plans for the coming year. For me, it is all of those things plus a time when I u...
Lately there seems to be a lot of buzz around the whole Flex, Flash, Apollo environment for creating extremely powerful, cross-platform RIAs (Rich Interactive Application). In the interest of fairness and objectivity, I've been reserving judgement until I got a chance to really play more with Flex. Likewise, I hadn't really made any judgements about WPF/E yet, either.
So, when I read today that Microsoft had changed the name of WPF/E to Silverlight, I got a little excited. Why? Because by changing that name, it sounded a little bit like Microsoft had finally decided they were going to throw down the gauntlet and try and compete directly with Flex.
I went and saw that Microsoft had re-skinned their WPF/E developer page and it was now called the "Silverlight Developer Zone" , which looked promising. Even more interesting was that there was now a download for the February CTP of WPF/E for the Mac. This looked really good, so I grabbed the CTP for Vista, grabbed the SDK, grabbed some samples and started to look around.
This is where I threw my hands up in disgust. What in the holy name of Scooby-Doo are those people thinking?!?! After poring through the API, I thought "I must be mistaken. Surely this is a mistake." But then I asked a colleague and he confirmed it for me. Let me skip a couple lines and highlight this so you all can see it clearly.
WPF/E (Silverlight) HAS NO SUPPORT FOR BINDING TO MODELS, BINDING TO DATA, OR EVEN CONNECTING TO NETWORK RESOURCES TO OBTAIN DATA.
So, I will summarize Microsoft's efforts to date around Silverlight. They have created a declarative programming model that uses XAML as an instantiation language for rich 2D (not 3D) content and animations, as well as extended JavaScript to support this model. Using this model, you can create embedded mini-apps that have access to rich animations, graphics, audio, and video objects. However, these mini applications cannot communicate with the outside world, they cannot consume web services, and they cannot bind UI elements to data. In addition, this model doesn't even have support for things that should be considered a stock part of any library such as buttons, checkboxes, list boxes, list views, grids, etc.
In short, unless my findings are incorrect, Silverlight, as it stands now, with no support for data binding, service consumption, or basic UI controls, is a worthless steamy pile. I just took a huge step in Flex's direction.
About Kevin Hoffman Kevin Hoffman, editor-in-chief of SYS-CON's iPhone Developer's Journal, has been programming since he was 10 and has written everything from DOS shareware to n-tier, enterprise web applications in VB, C++, Delphi, and C. Hoffman is coauthor of Professional .NET Framework (Wrox Press) and co-author with Robert Foster of Microsoft SharePoint 2007 Development Unleashed. He authors The .NET Addict's Blog at .NET Developer's Journal.
Silverlight supports web services. This allows you to access and update any data source you need to. You can create any controls you need to for the UI. The fact that you have to make them yourself keeps the Silverlight install small.
We support data access with LINQ, Network Access via the slimmed down .NET sliverlight framework so that you can write some .NET code to bind to these resources (as well as web services) so that you can then have your Silverlight code interact with the .NET code that binds to this.
We also support direct access from Silverlight to web services via JSON (Java Script Object Notation) and POX servcies (that allow calls to simple web services)
There is much more support (streaming media, XLINQ
If you have questions feel free to email me and I can connect you to others as well.
With VS2008 due by end of 2007 we will directly support Silverlight applications with all the WYSWG support you would expect. As with any new platform the early adopters often have to hand code things a bit until the tools catch up. :)
#12
Junior commented on 18 Jun 2007
Why is it that this "article" is now listed as "Published June 2, 2007", when it was in fact published in April 2007, and has been proved to be completely inaccurate to boot? It's like someone is trying to resurrect the FUD in the "article" by republishing it two months later.
#11
Andrew Badera commented on 4 May 2007
The only steamy pile I'm seeing is this article. Piss poor "research." You've have just lost all credibility. Your article makes me think you casually perused the API while throwing back a few at the bar, for all the in-depth analysis and accurate results you've produced.
Are you going to apologise for posting utter tosh?
Oh wait, you had a sneaky 'Unless I am incorrect' disclaimer. Neat!
#8
Brett commented on 22 Apr 2007
Bloggers like yourself is what makes blog articles unappealing and useless. The worst thing about people like you is that there is no credibility system in place. Posting erroneous information coupled with a very strong wording should result in your dumb face not blogging for sometime until you learn to research before writing.
Don't you think "steaming pile" might be a little strong to denounce Silverlight? Microsoft has always done mediocre 1.0 releases, but if there's a priority to build an RIA framework to compete with Adobe, then I wouldn't count Microsoft out just yet.
In fact, nothing surprized me, Adobe is so far away in front of everybody that Microsoft will take years to get just close to what Flash/Flex can do....
#3
Silverlight Guy commented on 18 Apr 2007
It's a beta dude!
#2
SEO News commented on 17 Apr 2007
In short, unless my findings are incorrect, Silverlight, as it stands now, with no support for data binding, service consumption, or basic UI controls, is a worthless steamy pile. I just took a huge step in Flex's direction.
#1
.NET News commented on 17 Apr 2007
In short, unless my findings are incorrect, Silverlight, as it stands now, with no support for data binding, service consumption, or basic UI controls, is a worthless steamy pile. I just took a huge step in Flex's direction.
Michael Washington wrote: Silverlight supports web services. This allows you to access and update any data source you need to. You can create any controls you need to for the UI. The fact that you have to make them yourself keeps the Silverlight install small.
Marc Wolfson wrote: Hi Kevin,
Please check out the current (Silverlight 1.1)SDK at http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb404713.aspx
We support data access with LINQ, Network Access via the slimmed down .NET sliverlight framework so that you can write some .NET code to bind to these resources (as well as web services) so that you can then have your Silverlight code interact with the .NET code that binds to this.
We also support direct access from Silverlight to web services via JSON (Java Script Object Notation) and POX servcies (that allow calls to simple web services)
There is much more support (streaming media, XLINQ
If you have questions feel free to email me and I can connect you to others as well.
With VS2008 due by end of 2007 we will directly support Silverlight applications with all the WYSWG support you would expect. As with any new platform the early adopters often have to...
Junior wrote: Why is it that this "article" is now listed as "Published June 2, 2007", when it was in fact published in April 2007, and has been proved to be completely inaccurate to boot? It's like someone is trying to resurrect the FUD in the "article" by republishing it two months later.
Andrew Badera wrote: The only steamy pile I'm seeing is this article. Piss poor "research." You've have just lost all credibility. Your article makes me think you casually perused the API while throwing back a few at the bar, for all the in-depth analysis and accurate results you've produced.
Brett wrote: Bloggers like yourself is what makes blog articles unappealing and useless. The worst thing about people like you is that there is no credibility system in place. Posting erroneous information coupled with a very strong wording should result in your dumb face not blogging for sometime until you learn to research before writing.
Anonymous Coward wrote: Don't you think "steaming pile" might be a little strong to denounce Silverlight? Microsoft has always done mediocre 1.0 releases, but if there's a priority to build an RIA framework to compete with Adobe, then I wouldn't count Microsoft out just yet.
Francois Dubuc wrote: In fact, nothing surprized me, Adobe is so far away in front of everybody that Microsoft will take years to get just close to what Flash/Flex can do....
SEO News wrote: In short, unless my findings are incorrect, Silverlight, as it stands now, with no support for data binding, service consumption, or basic UI controls, is a worthless steamy pile. I just took a huge step in Flex's direction.
.NET News wrote: In short, unless my findings are incorrect, Silverlight, as it stands now, with no support for data binding, service consumption, or basic UI controls, is a worthless steamy pile. I just took a huge step in Flex's direction.
EMC and VMware are going into the cloud business with Atos, the big, publicly owned, Paris-based global IT services firm, intending to take an equity position in Canopy, an end-to-end cloud company Atos is setting up using EMC and VMware technology.
The companies said Wednesday when ...
A Munich court Thursday found Motorola Mobility guilty of infringing an Apple patent and handed Apple a permanent injunction against two Android smartphones.
Apple can enforce the injunction after posting a bond lest MMI succeed in invalidating the slide-to-unlock patent (EP1964022) ...
In a surprise move on Tuesday, January 10, Oracle wheeled out its Big Data Appliance.
That’s the one it said in October would be ready sometime in the first half. Only nobody believed it meant early in the first half. Heck, it’s not even clear anybody thought Oracle could make the fi...
Quick Response (QR) codes are intended to help direct users quickly and easily to information about products and services, but they are also starting to be used for social engineering exploits. This article looks at the emergence of QR scan scams and the rising concern for users today....
The Chinese company that claims it owns the iPad trademark says it plans to seek a ban on iPad exports out of China, threatening global supplies.
According to what a lawyer for Proview Technology (Shenzhen) Co Ltd told Reuters, the firm is petitioning Chinese customs to stop shipment...
Cisco Wednesday filed suit in the European Union’s second-highest court, the General Court in Luxembourg, challenging the European Commission’s rubber stamp last October of Microsoft’s $8.5 billion acquisition of Skype.
Cisco says it isn’t opposed to the merger, but figures the EC sh...
About Newsfeeds / Video Feeds
.gif)
So, when I read today that Microsoft had changed the name of WPF/E to Silverlight, I got a little excited. Why? Because by changing that name, it sounded a little bit like Microsoft had finally decided they were going to throw down the gauntlet and try and compete directly with Flex.
EMC and VMware are going into the cloud business with Atos, the big, publicly owned, Paris-based global IT services firm, intending to take an equity position in Canopy, an end-to-end cloud company Atos is setting up using EMC and VMware technology.
The companies said Wednesday when ...
A Munich court Thursday found Motorola Mobility guilty of infringing an Apple patent and handed Apple a permanent injunction against two Android smartphones.
Apple can enforce the injunction after posting a bond lest MMI succeed in invalidating the slide-to-unlock patent (EP1964022) ...
In a surprise move on Tuesday, January 10, Oracle wheeled out its Big Data Appliance.
That’s the one it said in October would be ready sometime in the first half. Only nobody believed it meant early in the first half. Heck, it’s not even clear anybody thought Oracle could make the fi...
Quick Response (QR) codes are intended to help direct users quickly and easily to information about products and services, but they are also starting to be used for social engineering exploits. This article looks at the emergence of QR scan scams and the rising concern for users today....
The Chinese company that claims it owns the iPad trademark says it plans to seek a ban on iPad exports out of China, threatening global supplies.
According to what a lawyer for Proview Technology (Shenzhen) Co Ltd told Reuters, the firm is petitioning Chinese customs to stop shipment...
Cisco Wednesday filed suit in the European Union’s second-highest court, the General Court in Luxembourg, challenging the European Commission’s rubber stamp last October of Microsoft’s $8.5 billion acquisition of Skype.
Cisco says it isn’t opposed to the merger, but figures the EC sh...
