Category Archives: microsoft

intel, internet, media, microsoft, multimedia, open source, Web, windows

If Microsoft is serious about Silverlight, it needs to do Linux

September 16, 2010 onlyconnect 9 Comments

Today was a significant event for the UK broadcasting industry: the announcement of YouView, formerly called Project Canvas, which is backed by partners including the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5, and BT. It will provide broadcasts over IP, received by a set top box, include a catch-up service, and be capable of interactive features that hook into internet services.

Interesting stuff, though it may end up battling with Google TV. But what are the implications for media streaming services and media players? One is that they will have to run on Linux, which is the official operating system for Project Canvas. Google TV, for that matter, will run Android.

If you look at the YouView specifications, you’ll find that although the operating system is specified, the application player area is more open:

Application Player executables and libraries will be provided by 3rd party software vendors.

What is an application player?

Runtime environment for the execution of applications. Examples are Flash player, MHEG engine, W3C browser

I’d suggest that Adobe will do well out of YouView. Microsoft, on the other hand, will not be able to play in this space unless it delivers Silverlight for Linux, Android, and other open platforms.

Microsoft has a curious history of cross-platform Silverlight announcements. Early on it announced that Moonlight was the official Linux player, though in practice support for Moonlight has been half-hearted. Then when Intel announced the Atom Developer Program (now AppUp) in September 2009, Microsoft stated that it would provide its own build of Silverlight for Linux, or rather, than Intel would build it with Microsoft’s code. Microsoft’s Brian Goldfarb told me that Microsoft and Intel would work together on bringing Silverlight to devices, while Moonlight would be the choice for desktop Linux.

Since then, the silence has been deafening. I’ve enquired about progress with both Intel and Microsoft, but vague rumours aside, no news. Silverlight is still listed as a future runtime for AppUp:

Microsoft® Silverlight™(future)

Silverlight is a cross-browser, cross-platform and cross-device browser plug-in that helps companies design, develop and deliver applications and experiences on the Web.

In the meantime, Adobe has gone ahead with its AIR runtime, and even if Silverlight eventually appears, has established an early presence on Intel’s netbook platform.

There have been recent rumours about internal battles between the Windows and Developer divisions at Microsoft, and I cannot help wondering if this is another symptom, with the Windows folk fighting against cross-platform Silverlight on the grounds that it could damage the Windows lock-in, while the Developer team tries to make Silverlight the ubiquitous runtime that it needs to be in order to succeed.

From my perspective, the answer is simple. Suppressing Silverlight will do nothing to safeguard Windows, whereas making it truly cross-platform could drive adoption of Microsoft’s server and cloud platform. When Silverlight was launched, just doing Windows and Mac was almost enough, but today the world looks different. If Microsoft is serious about WPF Everywhere, Linux and Android (which is Linux based) support is a necessity.

internet, microsoft, software

Microsoft Internet Explorer 9 beta is out

September 15, 2010 onlyconnect 2 Comments

Head over to http://www.beautyoftheweb.com/ and you can download the beta of Internet Explorer 9, which is now up and running on my Windows 7 64-bit machine and looking good so far.

So what’s new? In terms of the rendering engine, this is like the last Platform Preview, but a little bit further along. During the briefing, we looked at at the experimental (and impressive) site put together by EMC, which shows 3D rotation of a motor vehicle along with other effects, put together entirely in HTML 5. At the time I only had the fourth platform preview installed, and the site did not work. Amusingly, I was advised to use Google Chrome, which worked fine. Now that I’ve installed the beta, the same site works in IE9, rather more smoothly than in Chrome.

What’s really new though is the user interface. The two things that jump out are the adoption of a single box for search and URL entry – many users do not understand the difference anyway – and the ability to drag tabs to the taskbar to pin them there like application shortcuts. Once pinned, they support Windows 7 Jump Lists, even when the site is not active:

If you squint at this screenshot, you’ll notice that the Discovery site, which is tweaked to use this feature, has a good-looking icon as well as a Jump List, whereas the icons adjacent to it look bad. That’s because you need to create a new large favicon to support this feature, as well as optionally adding metadata to create the Jump List. None of this is any use, of course, if you use Vista; and if you use XP you cannot even install IE9.

There’s also a download manager at last.

There’s no doubt that IE9 is miles better than IE8. Is it better than rivals like Chrome, from which a casual observer might think it has drawn inspiration? Too soon to say; but using the official native browser does have advantages, like integration with Windows Update as well integration with the OS.

That said, I’m not personally a big fan of the single box approach, and I’ll miss the permanent menus. If you press the Alt key the old File, Edit View etc magically appear, but I can’t see any way to make it persist.

.net, adobe, flash, iphone, java, microsoft, mobile, software development, visual studio, web authoring

Latest job stats on technology adoption – Flash, Silverlight, iPhone, Android, C#, Java

September 14, 2010 onlyconnect 13 Comments

It is all very well expressing opinions on which technologies are hot and which are struggling, but what is happening in the real world? It is hard to get an accurate picture – surveys tend to have sampling biases of one kind or another, and vendors rarely release sales figures. I’ve never been happy with the TIOBE approach, counting mentions on the Internet; it is a measure of what is discussed, not what is used.

Another approach is to look at job vacancies. This is not ideal either; the number of vacancies might not be proportionate to the numbers in work, keyword searches are arbitrary and can include false positives and omit relevant ads that happen not to mention the keywords. Still, it is a real-world metric and worth inspecting along with the others. The following table shows figures as of today at indeed.com (for the US) and itjobswatch (for the UK), both of which make it easy to get stats.

Update – for the UK I’ve added both permanent and contract jobs from itjobswatch. I’ve also added C, C++, Python and F#, (which hardly registers). For C I searched Indeed.com for “C programming”.

	Indeed.com (US)	itjobswatch (UK permanent)	itjobswatch (UK contract)
Java	97,890	17,844	6,919
Flash	52,616	2,288	723
C++	48,816	8,440	2470
C#	46,708	18,345	5.674
Visual Basic	35,412	3,332	1,061
C	27,195	7,225	3,137
ASP.NET	25,613	10,353	2,628
Python	17,256	1,970	520
Ruby	9,757	968	157
iPhone	7,067	783	335
Silverlight	5,026	2,162	524
Android	4,755	585	164
WPF	4,441	3,088	857
Adobe Flex	2,920	1,143	579
Azure	892	76	5
F#	36	66	1

A few quick comments. First, don’t take the figures too seriously – it’s a quick snapshot of a couple of job sites and there could be all sorts of reasons why the figures are skewed.

Second, there are some surprising differences between the two sites in some cases, particularly for Flash – this may be because indeed.com covers design jobs but itjobswatch not really. The difference for Ruby surprises me, but it is a common word and may be over-stated at Indeed.com.

Third, I noticed that of 892 Azure jobs at Indeed.com, 442 of the vacancies are in Redmond.

Fourth, I struggled to search for Flex at Indeed.com. A search for Flex on its own pulls in plenty of jobs that have nothing to do with Adobe, while narrowing with a second word understates the figure.

The language stats probably mean more than the technology stats. There are plenty of ads that mention C# but don’t regard it as necessary to state “ASP.NET” or “WPF” – but that C# code must be running somewhere.

Conclusions? Well, Java is not dead. Silverlight is not unseating Flash, though it is on the map. iPhone and Android have come from nowhere to become significant platforms, especially in the USA. Beyond that I’m not sure, though I’ll aim to repeat the exercise in six months and see how it changes.

If you have better stats, let me know or comment below.

.net, adobe, microsoft, professional, silverlight, software development, web authoring

Microsoft’s Scott Guthrie: We have 200+ engineers working on Silverlight and WPF

September 13, 2010 onlyconnect 6 Comments

Microsoft is countering rumours that WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) or Silverlight, a cross-platform browser plug-in based on the same XAML markup language and .NET programming combination as WPF, are under any sort of threat from HTML 5.0.

We have 200+ engineers right now working on upcoming releases of SL and WPF – which is a heck of a lot.

says Corporate VP .NET Developer Platform Scott Guthrie in a Twitter post. Other comments include this one:

We are investing heavily in Silverlight and WPF

and this one:

We just shipped Silverlight for Windows Phone 7 last week, and WPF Ribbon about 30 days ago: http://bit.ly/aB6e6X

In addition, Microsoft has been showing off IIS Media Services 4.0 at the International Broadcasting Conference, which uses Silverlight as the multimedia client:

Key new features include sub-two-second low-latency streaming, transmuxing between H.264 file formats and integrated transcoding through Microsoft Expression Encoder 4. Microsoft will also show technology demonstrations of Silverlight Enhanced Movies, surround sound in Silverlight and live 3-D 1080p Internet broadcasting using IIS Smooth Streaming and Silverlight technologies.

No problem then? Well, Silverlight is great work from Microsoft, powerful, flexible, and surprisingly small and lightweight for what it can do. Combined with ASP.NET or Windows Azure it forms part of an excellent cloud-to-client .NET platform. Rumours of internal wrangling aside, the biggest issue is that Microsoft seems reluctant to grasp its cross-platform potential, leaving it as a Windows and desktop Mac solution just at the time when iPhone, iPad and Android devices are exploding in popularity.

I will be interested to see if Microsoft announces Silverlight for Android this autumn, and if it does, how long it will take to deliver. The company could also give more visibility to its work on Silverlight for Symbian – maybe this will come more into the spotlight following the appointment of Stephen Elop, formerly of Microsoft, as Nokia CEO.

Apple is another matter. A neat solution I’ve seen proposed a few times is to create a Silverlight-to-JavaScript compiler along the lines of GWT (Google Web Toolkit) which converts Java to JavaScript. Of course it would also need to convert XAML layout to SVG. Incidentally, this could also be an interesting option for Adobe Flash applications.

As for WPF, I would be surprised if Microsoft is giving it anything like the attention being devoted to Silverlight, unless the Windows team has decided to embrace it within the OS itself. That said, WPF is already a mature framework. WPF will not go away, but I can readily believe that its future progress will be slow.

internet, microsoft

Microsoft Vine formally withered

September 11, 2010 onlyconnect

Remember Microsoft Vine? It was a well-meaning but puzzling product intended to assist communication in emergencies, but with additional potential for social communication. To nobody’s surprise, Microsoft has emailed beta testers to inform that that the project is to be discontinued:

The decision to discontinue future development of Microsoft Vine was not easily made. Multiple options were thoroughly explored and evaluated with rigor and in the end it was determined that Microsoft Vine is not sustainable as a standalone offering.

If there is a need for something like Vine in disasters and emergencies, it could only work as a cross-industry, cross-platform initiative. On the other hand, if Microsoft had in mind new ways to exchange local information, maybe enhancing Live Messenger would have been a better idea. One of the snags with Vine is that for it to be useful in an emergency, users would have to be signed up beforehand, but many of us are too busy on Facebook, Twitter or Messenger to think about it.

.net, microsoft, silverlight, software development, visual studio

More on Microsoft’s difficult choices: WPF, Silverlight, HTML 5

September 9, 2010 onlyconnect 8 Comments

Earlier today I posted a story speculating about the future direction of Microsoft’s development platform, which has proved controversial and to some extent has been misunderstood. Although it is speculative, the issues are important since developers want to target platforms with a strong future. Here’s another take on why Microsoft, whichever way it decides to go, faces some difficult choices.

First, let me be clear: I don’t see Microsoft abandoning Windows Presentation Foundation let alone Silverlight. Microsoft has an good track record when it comes to continuing support for its technologies, better than competing platforms. Visual Basic 6 applications mostly still run today on Windows 7, perhaps with a few issues caused by User Account Control for which there are workarounds. Whatever you target, there is an excellent chance Microsoft will continue to support it long into the future. The main exception I can think of is Windows Mobile, which is incompatible with the new Windows Phone 7 series, but given the challenges Microsoft faces in mobile you can understand the decision.

Nor is there any chance of Microsoft reviving old frameworks. There will not be a return to Windows Forms. WPF is a better GUI framework in every way, other than performance on older systems – though note that Windows Forms applications still run fine today, and I imagine will run fine on Windows 8 and probably 9 as well.

The real question is not about support, but future investment. Microsoft has finite resources. It is in overdrive right now on Internet Explorer, on Silverlight, on Windows Phone 7, and on Azure, for example. There will be other products and technologies that receive less attention, because someone has decided they are not strategic.

It also seems to me that Microsoft’s server and cloud story is less conflicted. From the developer’s perspective it is thoroughly .NET based, and you can be confident that technologies like C#, IIS, ASP.NET, SQL Server, Exchange and SharePoint will be around for the foreseeable future.

With that out of the way, a few further comments.

Windows Presentation Foundation

The history of WPF goes back to the early days of Windows Vista, then called Longhorn. WPF was one of the the “three pillars”, Avalon, where the others were Indigo (WCF) and WinFS. Avalon was the future of the Windows GUI API, based on .NET code and XAML layout.

If Longhorn has proceeded as planned, WPF would be the loose equivalent of Cocoa on Apple’s OS X, the standard way to code Windows GUI applications. Unfortunately, in 2004, Microsoft discovered that Longhorn was heading for disaster. The project was reset, delaying release and resulting in Vista being both late and rushed. The reset project included Avalon as a supported framework, but made it incidental to the workings of Windows itself. The Windows team, in other words, lost faith in Avalon and reverted to native code with a dash of DirectX.

Windows 7 is more of the same. WPF is there but it is not at the heart of the OS. Developers are encouraged to use it for their own apps, but the Windows team is focused on native code.

When Visual Studio 2010 was released, with a shell built in WPF, Microsoft made some noise about how it showed its commitment to the framework. It was also noted that the Visual Studio team had worked with the WPF team to fix some issues. However, there is little sign of WPF changing its role as a layer in Windows primarily to support custom applications, rather than being used for the shell of Windows itself.

The question now: how much should Microsoft invest in future WPF development? It is not essential for Windows itself. Nor it is compelling for developers wanting to take advantage of the cloud model and support diverse clients. Frankly it does not look strategic unless it becomes the Windows shell API; and you could understand Microsoft having a “once bitten twice shy” attitude to that possibility.

I find it plausible that Microsoft would throttle back on WPF development.

Silverlight

Silverlight by contrast is strategic. Silverlight is a framework that runs in the browser, out of browser, and on Windows Phone 7. It is lightweight and cloud-oriented, and it runs .NET code, ticking lots of boxes for developers moving on from Windows desktop applications. It is also designer-friendly, with rich graphics and multimedia support. There are still a few gaps – printing is crude, for example – but it makes more sense for Microsoft to invest in Silverlight than WPF. It is significant that the new LightSwitch tool for rapid development of database apps targets Silverlight, not WPF, and not ASP.NET (except on the server). Silverlight is also the application platform for Windows Phone 7.

Then again, Silverlight is WPF. It was originally WPF/Everywhere, and uses the same XAML language for layout.

I will be surprised if Microsoft back-pedals on Silverlight. Nevertheless, I can also understand this being a matter of debate. Despite Microsoft’s efforts to distinguish them, there is considerable overlap between what Silverlight does, and what HTML 5 in IE9 does, especially when in the browser. There is also the Apple problem: HTML applications will run on iPhone and iPad, but Silverlight will not. What if Microsoft focused on the new IE engine instead of Silverlight, supporting it properly in Visual Studio, and providing ways for developers to create out-of-browser apps that run with full trust and have access to local system APIs? This would be along the same lines as the Palm WebOS and Google’s Chrome OS.

Put another way, does it make sense for Microsoft to invest equally in HTML 5 and Silverlight, when possibly IE 9 could be the basis of a unifying technology, a subset of which would work on any modern browser on any client?

It seems to me that Microsoft will have to invest in tooling for HTML 5 clients in some forthcoming edition of Visual Studio, and that this will be a selling point for its cloud platform, while possibly undermining the role of Silverlight.

There is also a continuing case for Silverlight, both because of the inherent advantages of a plug-in – consistency of client platform as well as features that HTML 5 lacks – and because it supports .NET. The .NET languages (Mono aside) tie developers to Visual Studio and to Microsoft’s platform. Visual Studio combined with .NET is a formidable tool for both client and server and a key advantage for the platform.

Watch this space.

.net, microsoft, silverlight, software development

Microsoft wrestles with HTML5 vs Silverlight futures

September 9, 2010 onlyconnect 24 Comments

Former Microsoft Silverlight Product Manager Scott Barnes has posted a series of tweets following a visit to Microsoft:

So.. after a week in Microsoft HQ etc.. i have a lot of inside info that just basically puts into question the future of #Silverlight #wpf

he remarks, and then:

Right now there’s a faction war inside Microsoft over HTML5 vs Silverlight. oh and WPF is dead.. i mean..it kind of was..but now.. funeral.

Barnes positions it as a fight between Windows/IE9 backing HTML5, and the developer division backing Silverlight. He also suggests that Microsoft is contemplating a classic “Embrace and extend” strategy for HTML:

HTML5 is the replacement for WPF.. IE team want to fork the HTML5 spec by bolting on custom windows APi’s via JS/HTML5

He says further that Microsoft has “shut down the designer story” – I am not sure what that implies, though I can imagine that a lot of money has been sunk into the Expression tools without drawing significant market share from Adobe’s Creative Suite.

Barnes is a straight-talking guy but clearly this is all speculation. Nevertheless it is obvious that, on the eve of launching IE9 beta with its fast JavaScript engine, hardware accelerated graphics, and pixel-precise bitmap drawing, Microsoft has a tricky job positioning HTML5 vs Silverlight. For that matter, even positioning Silverlight vs desktop Windows Presentation Foundation is not easy.

Since we are also on the eve of launch for Windows Phone 7, which Microsoft has flagged as a strategic product and which uses Silverlight as its app platform, it seems unlikely that the technology will be sidelined; but rumours of internal divisions on the subject do not surprise me.

.net, adobe, development, flash, internet, microsoft, professional, silverlight, software development, visual studio, web authoring, windows, windows 7

Silverlight versus HTML, Flash – Microsoft defends its role

September 2, 2010 onlyconnect 2 Comments

Microsoft’s Brad Becker, Director of Product Management for Developer Platforms, has defended the role of Silverlight in the HTML 5 era. Arguing that it is natural for HTML to acquire some of the features previously provided by plug-ins – “because some of these features are so pervasive on the web that they are seen by users as fundamentally expected capabilities” – he goes on to identify three areas where Silverlight remains necessary. These are “premium” multimedia which merges video with application elements such as conferencing, picture in picture, DRM, analytics; consumers apps and games; and finally business/enterprise apps.

It is the last of these which interests me most. Becker’s statements come soon after the preview of Visual Studio LightSwitch, which is solely designed for data-driven business applications. Taking the two together, and bearing in mind that apps may run on the desktop as well as in browser, Silverlight is now encroaching on the territory which used to belong to Windows applications. With LightSwitch in particular, Microsoft is encouraging developers who might previously have built an app in Access or Visual Basic to consider Silverlight instead.

Why? Isn’t Microsoft better off if developers stick to Windows-only applications?

In one sense it is, as it gets the Windows lock-in – and yes, this is effective. I’m aware of businesses who are tied to Windows because of apps that they use, who might otherwise consider Macs for all or some of their business desktops. On the other hand, even Microsoft can see the direction in which we are travelling – cloud, mobile, diverse clients – and that Silverlight fits better with this model than Windows-only desktop clients.

Another consideration is that setup and deployment issues remain a pain-point for Windows apps. One issue is when it goes wrong, and Windows requires skilled surgery to get some app installed and working. Another issue is the constant energy drain of getting new computers and having to provision them with the apps you need. Microsoft has improved this no end for larger organisations, with standard system images and centralised application deployment, but Silverlight is still a welcome simplification; provided that the runtime is installed, it is pretty much the web model – just navigate to the URL and the app is there, right-click if you want to run on the desktop.

If Microsoft can also establish Windows Phone 7, which uses Silverlight as the runtime for custom apps, the platform then extends to mobile as well as desktop and browser.

The downside is that Silverlight apps have fewer capabilities than native Windows apps. Printing is tricky, for example, though Becker refers to “Virtualized printing” and I am not sure what exactly he means. He also highlights COM automation and group policy management, features that only work on Windows and which undermine Silverlight’s cross-platform promise. That said, via COM automation Silverlight has full access to the local machine giving developers a way of overcoming any limitations if they are willing to abandon cross-platform and browser-hosted deployment.

A winning strategy? Well, at least it is one that makes sense in the cloud era. On the other hand, Microsoft faces substantial difficulties in establishing Silverlight as a mainstream development platform. One is that Adobe was there first with Flash, which has a more widely deployed runtime, works on Android and soon other mobile devices, and is supported by the advanced design tools in Creative Suite. Another is the Apple factor, the popular iPhone and iPad devices which are a spear through the heart of cross-platform runtimes like Silverlight and Flash.

Finally, even within the Microsoft development community Silverlight is a hard sell for many developers. Some us recall how hard the company had to work to persuade Visual Basic 6 developers to move to .NET. The reason was not just stubborn individuals who dislike change – though there was certainly some of that – but also existing investment in code that could not easily be migrated. Both factors also apply to Silverlight. Further, it is a constrained platform, which means developers have to live with certain limitations. It is also managed code only, whereas some of the best developers for both desktop and mobile apps work in C/C++.

I suspect there is division even within Microsoft with regard to Silverlight. Clearly it has wide support and is considered a strategic area of development. At the same time, it is not helpful to the Windows team who will want to see apps that take advantage of new features in Windows 7 and beyond.

Yesterday Windows Phone 7 was released to manufacturing, which means the software is done. Another piece of the Silverlight platform is in place; and I guess over the next year or two we will see the extent to which Microsoft can make it a success.

.net, internet, iphone, java, microsoft, oracle, software, Sun, Web, windows

Open season for patent litigation makes case for reform

August 31, 2010 onlyconnect

It seems to be open season for software patent litigation. Oracle is suing Google over its use of Java in Android. Paul Allen’s Interval Licensing is suing AOL, Apple, eBay, Facebook, Google, Netflix, Yahoo and others – the Wall Street Journal has an illustrated discussion of the patents involved here. Let’s not forget that Apple is suing HTC and that Nokia is suing Apple (and being counter-sued).

What’s next? I was reminded of this post by former Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz. He confirms the supposition that large tech companies refrain from litigation – or at least, litigate less than they might, refrain is too strong a word right now – because they recognize that while they may have valid claims against others, they also most likely infringe on patents held by others.

The gist of Schwartz’s post is that Microsoft approached Sun with the claim that OpenOffice, owned by Sun, infringes on patents held by Microsoft thanks to its work on MIcrosoft Office:

Bill skipped the small talk, and went straight to the point, “Microsoft owns the office productivity market, and our patents read all over OpenOffice.”

Sun’s retort was in relation to Java and .NET:

“We’ve looked at .NET, and you’re trampling all over a huge number of Java patents. So what will you pay us for every copy of Windows?”

following which everything went quiet. The value of .NET to Microsoft is greater than the value of OpenOffice to Sun or Oracle.

Oracle, however, seems more willing to litigate than Sun; and I doubt it cares much about OpenOffice. Might we see this issue reappear?

That said, Microsoft also has a large bank of patents; and who knows, some of them might be brought to bear against Java in the event of legislative war.

The risk though is that if everyone litigates, the industry descends into a kind of nuclear winter which paralyses everyone. Companies like Interval Licensing, which seemingly exist solely to profit from patents, have no incentive to hold back.

Can any good come of this? Well, increasing software patent chaos might bring some benefit, if it forces countries like the USA to legislate in order to fix the broken patent system.

Protecting intellectual property is good; but against that you have to weigh the potential damage to competition and innovation from these energy-sapping lawsuits.

We need patent reform now.

Tim Anderson's IT Writing