Silverlight Update Aims for Greater Adoption Through Developers

[qhoxie]

http://www.webmonkey.com/blog/Silverlight_Update_Aims_for_Greater_Adoption_Through_Developers

[trezor]

Microsoft now claims about one in four computers have Silverlight installed.

If this is true, Microsoft is doing better than I expected.

(And I'm a .NET developer, not one of those politically opposed to Silverlight because it isn't free enough for their particular preference of free)

[qhoxie → trezor]

I don't believe those figures for a second. I'm usually surprised when I see SL installed on someone's system.

[sfamiliar → qhoxie]

i have yet to view anything that makes me want to install silverlight. that's unlikely to change.

[fatdog789 → sfamiliar]

The Olympics.Streaming, high-quality, LIVE video feed. The low bandwidth quality SL content easily beat the high-bandwidth quality of Flash streams on sites like Hulu and Amazon VOD.

And that was just the beta.

[nailer → fatdog789]

"And that was just the beta."

I don't understand what you mean here. Do you think Microsoft will fund even more people to make SilverLight-exclusive content after the beta?

[dandelany → trezor]

I'm sure they meant one in four computers at Microsoft HQ :)

[wizlb]

It simply doesn't matter if anyone has Silverlight installed or not. If you build a killer app with it, users will install it if you tell them to. How do you think Flash got so big?

[nailer → wizlb]

Not if they can't. What's the current best selling hardware category in computing? What OS do they use? Does Microsoft provide a stable, working Silverlight plugin?

[fatdog789 → wizlb]

For a long while, it was installed on OEM computers like Dell and HP, so users didn't need to install it.

It still is installed by default on most consumer-line Dell models.

[TweedHeads]

Maybe microsoft installed it itself in my xp but i will never install it by myself. They bundle it with messenger, live id, explorer toolbars or who knows what.

[chaostheory → TweedHeads]

they bundle it with the latest Office installer (including the OSX version)