
Microsoft has Abandoned Silverlight and All Other Plugins - bleakgadfly
http://www.infoq.com/news/2011/09/Metro-Plug-ins
======
rodh257
The headline is sensationalist and wrong. Think of it this way, Metro is their
tablet/iPad mode. The iPad has no flash/silverlight in the browser, and
neither does Metro IE. This in order to get the best tablet experience,
battery life etc. The difference is, you can hit a button and open up full
Windows desktop mode and get the full browsing experience, while accepting a
tradeoff in battery life.

They aren't abandoning it, they're just optimizing for the use case. In fact,
Silverlight developers should be happy - with some simple namespace changes,
they demonstrated converting a silverlight program to a Metro UI on stage in
the keynote. Sure your program may not run in the browser unless they swap to
full desktop mode, but it will be easy for you to make it a proper installed
application if you desire.

It's a good decision in my book, and will result in a better tablet
experience. Frankly all the misinformation and hyperbole around this is
getting exhausting. They've really not pulled the rug from under anyone at
all.

~~~
saturdaysaint
It's a contortion to imagine Silverlight developers being happy. There's no
point in building Silverlight web applications if they won't work in the
default browser mode on PC's. So what was supposed to be a pervasive framework
for rich web applications is now one of many for an unproven platform. This is
such a heavy deprecation that abandoning it can't be far away.

~~~
WayneDB
I don't think you realize that Silverlight is XAML, WPF is XAML and Metro is
XAML. It's all the same stuff.

With relatively minor changes we'll be able to run our Silverlight or WPF XAML
in Metro and _continue_ to be able to run it the desktop browser (via the
Silverlight plugin on Windows or OS X) or out-of-browser as a desktop app (on
Windows or OS X).

To think that this is a deprecation is the contortion.

~~~
SigmundA
If you have every ported WPF to Silverlight you will know the changes are not
minor. They are similar but the differences are large enough to make things
very difficult in anything but trivial applications.

You also cannot share assemblies directly, which makes code reuse a big pain,
no word on whether WinRT will support normal assemblies, but it's runtime is
stripped down just as Silverlights is so probably not.

------
neilk
A question for those of you who work with Microsoft frameworks. Why do you
believe in _any_ technology that MS gives you? How is it these people have any
credibility left?

Their technologies are invariably doomed to obsolesence within about 2-3 years
of their introduction. Those that the web doesn't make obsolete are eventually
thrown under the bus by Microsoft themselves in about the same time frame.

~~~
peterhunt
neilk --

I am a Linux guy. I love Python, Emacs and open-source and I hate working
within the Microsoft developer ecosystem.

With that said, the .NET VM is light-years ahead of anything that anyone else
is doing. And they're investing in dynamic languages and tooling for those
languages. And they build stuff like F#, which is awesome.

Even C# rescues ex-Java people by giving them lambda expressions and local
type inference. This is something that should be celebrated, like Java's
garbage collection of yesteryear.

So yeah, they have a lot of political issues and their mainstream development
community sucks, but make no mistake: Microsoft has some phenomenal
technology.

~~~
kamaal
_Microsoft has some phenomenal technology._

It sure does, but Microsoft doesn't build technology to sell that
technology/tools/programming ecosystem.

They build it so that users can buy their OS on which those apps can run. The
more people build using their tools more OS licenses they can sell.In other
words the technology is a bait through which users can be fished to buy their
OS. This is a totally different thing when compared to Python/Perl other open
source tools which have dedicated teams whose primary job is to build and
share them to serve mutual interests.

When you find companies dropping a particular technology for something else,
its just that they figure out a better bait to catch more fish.

~~~
InclinedPlane
That used to be true, but it's not any more. If the division that makes VS,
.Net, et al were spunoff into its own company it would a: have billion dollar
revenues and b: be profitable in its own right.

~~~
rbanffy
> If the division that makes VS, .Net, et al were spunoff into its own company
> it would a: have billion dollar revenues and b: be profitable in its own
> right.

And they would probably have a full development stack running on Macs and
other Unixes (even Linux).

If the development tools division had not the burden of making products that
sell Windows and Office licenses, they would be free to do whatever makes
sense. Now they aren't

------
0x12
The title is nonsense, here is the microsoft blog post:

[http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/09/14/metro-style-
br...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/09/14/metro-style-browsing-and-
plug-in-free-html5.aspx)

~~~
davedx
Sensationalist maybe, but nonsense? It seems clear Microsoft is moving towards
a plugin-free user experience.

~~~
0x12
That must be why flash, silverlight and all the other 'goodies' are still
supported, just not in one particular view.

~~~
ConstantineXVI
Microsoft prides itself on extending backwards compatibility as far as it
reasonably can. Hence the "legacy" mode that maintains the traditional Windows
desktop/UI and support for browser plugins. Everything in new shiny Metro land
is a clean start, so it's reasonable to say "We aren't going to support
ActiveX controls in the browser anymore" there.

------
gavanwoolery
I am glad that they are ditching all of the pluggins, but sad that they are
settling on javascript as their primary language.

I know that the Hacker News community is very pro-javascript for the most
part, so I expect to be down-voted.

But at the very least, I think javascript could benefit from more competition.

I remember when Microsoft was the company that made standards, now they seem
be playing catch-up with the rest of the industry.

What I really would have loved to see them do is completely reinvent the
browser from the ground up. Support javascript and html 5 as "legacy" but
create a new, effective, and fast language for applications and rendering.

Web browsers are still stuck in document mode. We don't see anything wrong
with this, but links and back buttons are not the best way to control
application state. We have moved beyond documents and primarily create
applications these days (even if they are document-hosting applications like
blogs). Imagine if Photoshop was controlled using links and back buttons. I
know that javascript is capable of more advanced, realtime techniques, but
most websites are stilled laid out in the page by page format these days. On
top of it all, even V8 javascript still runs 10-20x slower than C.

~~~
mattmanser
The choice is javascript and Html OR .Net and Xaml, not just javascript. While
the plugin is dead, the stack is not.

I remember when C#/VB.Net first start competing head to head and it quickly
became apparent that C# had won even though there were originally more VB
devs.

It's far from decided yet. MS's usual javascript style is actually fairly odd
and irritating compared to what we're all used to, so I wouldn't be surprised
if people avoid it. They also have been pushing a bit of an odd way of
attempting to get intellisense support on js.

Even the code examples coming out of MS shouldn't be noted, they used to pump
out a lot of VB.Net examples when everyone else was using C#, which wasn't too
bad as you could convert them fairly easily.

The more I think about this, the more it looks like it's going to be a messy
fight. If you want to see what's winning, watch the questions on
StackOverflow.

BTW, they've also created a _lot_ of vendor specific CSS extensions including
a grid, so they are attempting to get out of document mode and move html
forward. I know your gripe though, always irritated me too.

~~~
noamsml
Vendor specific? <http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-grid/>

Yes, I know, Microsoft was clearly the one who pushed for CSS3 grid
positioning, but it's also a standard that can be adopted by any other browser
and, as someone who has used it a bit, I really hope it will be.

~~~
mattmanser
I just assumed it's was MS only atm from looking at the source they were
showing in the Win 8 demo.

I guess it all depends on if it's accepted before win 8 officially launches.

------
radimd
Am I the only one who thinks Microsoft is nuts with the whole Metro UI on a PC
thing?

I mean it may be a good UI for tablets, but I did not buy two 24" widescreen
monitors to run IE in fullscreen. When I use my PC I don't care about active
tiles or what's the desktop at all. I have apps to run and work to do.

And I am not about to replace my mouse & keyboard with touchscreen on the
desktop anytime soon (if ever).

Simply put tablets and PCs are not the same thing and are not used in for the
same purpose. They need different GUIs.

~~~
ne0fhyk
Here: [http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2011/09/hands-on-
with-...](http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2011/09/hands-on-with-
windows-8-a-tablet-operating-system-for-the-pc-age.ars)

Windows 8 has the metro UI, as well as a win7 like UI to use with mice, and
keyboard. Don't like the Metro UI, just run the regular windows-looking
desktop

~~~
HardyLeung
I'm afraid that's really not an option if you want to target all Windows 8
devices, as (I believe) many new Windows 8 devices would be Metro UI only. The
Microsoft folks already use the word "legacy" with the desktop UI.

In other words, Microsoft means to say "please use Metro, but if you have
legacy code don't be angry with us, 'cuz you have the desktop UI option... but
not on all devices"

~~~
ne0fhyk
That's false. The 'legacy' mode was shown running on arm devices as well:
[http://thisismynext.com/2011/09/14/nvidia-kal-el-
windows-8-t...](http://thisismynext.com/2011/09/14/nvidia-kal-el-
windows-8-tablet-hands-on/)

So the legacy mode will be available on both intel, and arm devices, which I
believe will make up all windows 8 devices. 'Legacy' desktop applications
would probably need to be recompiled to run on arm devices.

------
robinhouston
Putting the focus on Silverlight is an oddly parochial angle, when Silverlight
has so little significance in comparison with Flash.

This move is far more interesting, surely, as confirmation that Flash has lost
the browser wars and that web standards will determine the future of web
applications.

If you make a living as a Flash developer, it's long past time to start
learning about the web.

~~~
HardyLeung
Years ago the web was not powerful enough, hence Macromedia/Adobe Flash. Adobe
got complacent, thought it was the king of the world.

Then Microsoft joined the RIA fray with Silverlight, battling for control of
the web. Flash was everywhere, SL up-and-coming. It was meant to be a
spectacular battle, but both companies were blind-sided by this little web
standard thing which was about to crash the party...

Except that it didn't. The war didn't end because someone won, but because
Steve Jobs said so. It was only an illusion that HTML5 renders the RIA plugins
irrelevant. In reality, it was the emergence of native apps. First iPhone,
then Android, iPad, and now even Windows/Metro. Who cares about rich cross-
browser apps?

So instead of developing a rich application that runs on all platforms, you
either use HTML5/Javascript (if your application is not as hard), or implement
the same thing on 3 platforms with 3 different languages on using 3 different
toolsets. Wanna do something very rich/powerful cross-browser? Forget it!
Everybody happy now?

~~~
gamble
You make it sound so big-brother-esque, but users are the ones who chose
native apps over the browser. iOS has had excellent HTML/Javascript support
since the first iPhone - vastly, vastly better than any of its contemporary
competitors. In addition, web developers had a full year after it's release to
create compelling web apps, but instead they clamoured for native 3rd-party
apps.

What's held back web apps is not Steve Jobs, but the fact that creating them
is incredibly painful and produces results that are barely acceptable except
in a very small number of cases where the application is effectively a web
page to begin with. The standards and libraries have evolved extremely slowly
due to the difficulty of pushing out browser support across such a wide range
of slowly-updating platforms. What counts as amazing in the average web app
today wouldn't have been an impressive native client application in 1992.

~~~
HardyLeung
So... I gather that you are mostly (but violently) agreeing with me? I said
there was a 3-way war between Silverlight, Flash, and web app. At the end,
Steve Jobs made the call that they all suck and went with native app. He could
have sticked with Flash or web (and that was the original plan), but he went
ahead with native, a brilliant move in hindsight. Everyone went "what!", "how
dare you!" and then "ooh, ahh", and the rest is history.

------
teyc
Microsoft has been losing its Windows franchise since two key events:

1\. Netscape introducing navigator

2\. Microsoft stopping development post IE6

This has actually given the web browsers a modicum of stability and people
were able to develop against a stable medium, and allowed Firefox to catch up
in terms of compatibility.

In order to regain its Windows franchise, it needs to reimpose the Windows
tax.

Firstly, by making Metro IE10 plugin-less, it kills Adobe Flash as a
navigator-pretender.

Secondly, by introducing a lot of IE10 specific extensions, it hopes that
developers will start to make use of these, eventually leading to the
balkanization of the web, with MS having the highest share of desktops, it
hopes it can buy another 20 years of windows tax.

Thirdly, Apple's experience has shown that without plugins, developers will
either have to choose between HTML or Apps. Now Apps are a great way to create
lock in. The existence of plugins threatens that.

~~~
HardyLeung
I see the current move more of a defensive move (vs. Apple/Google) than an
offensive one (vs. Adobe). Microsoft did not and will not need to kill Adobe's
Flash. Steve Jobs already did.

~~~
Silhouette
> Microsoft did not and will not need to kill Adobe's Flash. Steve Jobs
> already did.

The jury is very much still out on that one.

Plenty of web sites are still Flash-based at least in part, and big companies
are still throwing serious money behind them, and this is several generations
of iDevice-without-Flash later.

Meanwhile, subjectively it seems like the number of complaints from people
using iDevices when they can't use a site for this reason has been growing a
little, at least on the forums I follow.

The difficulty for Flash, though, isn't just that it has the issues that come
with being a plug-in. It also has the issues that come with its development
environment and underlying programming language, which have many of the same
strengths and weaknesses as other tools these days, so there is nothing you
_need_ Flash to do any more. I doubt Apple can kill Flash alone, but a
combination of HTML5, JavaScript, better distribution systems for native
executables, new JVM languages running as applets, and any number of other
technologies might well do it in the longer term.

I imagine Adobe are well aware of this, as they have been promoting a lot of
alternative (and potentially much better) approaches to their traditionally
Flash-owned territory lately.

------
cageface
_But today, right now, HTML5 is not appropriate for the immersive applications
that Flash and Silverlight are capable of creating._

You could argue that Flash and Silverlight were never particularly appropriate
either. Cue native apps...

~~~
mahmud
Between Flash/Silverlight and native is Java. With Java7, you get GPU
accelerated multimedia, "applets" not restricted to the browser, point & click
deployment with Upstart ..

Very few people are doing client-side java these days, but those are making
some rich, immersive experiences, across platforms, and with push deployment.

Having said that, client-side java is hard; No "authoring" tools, all UI &
visualization is made by programmers .. not exactly the most discerning of
aesthetes ;-)

~~~
HardyLeung
I am possibly very biased about this. My opinion is that Silverlight is
strictly superior to Java as a CLIENT-SIDE technology in terms of speed
(runtime and startup time), memory, penetration (see <http://riastats.com>),
supporting and tooling, language support, feature set (GPU, out-of-browser,
etc), and deployment. If SL and Flash cannot survive, client-side Java browser
plugin has no chance.

~~~
mahmud
To be honest, when I got a technology budget a few months ago, I put my boss'
money on Android and HTML4, not flash, silverlight or java applets. So ..

------
agravier
A side note: the typos, misspelling, tortured wording and grammatical errors
make this article particularly painful to read. I first thought that it's an
automatic translation. If you are a tech writer, take a minimum care of these
things, and you will attract readers instead of repelling them.

~~~
EastSmith
Agree. Whenever there is a new post on B8 blog I go straight to Techmeme to
get "translated" version of it.

------
buff-a
No Google Chrome-in-IE either then.

I should probably be paying attention to this, but is Metro HTML5/js only?
Does that mean Chrome and Firefox are basically dead on Windows 8 (unless you
leave Metro)? And what about anti-trust lawsuits against IE??

~~~
simonw
No, Metro stuff can be written in C++/C#/etc - it's just a different set of
APIs to target. As I understand it, Chrome/Firefox would have to be ported to
run on the new Windows Runtime. I have no idea how difficult that would be.

~~~
jbk
I have had a quick look at it, in order to port different applications. It is
doable for complex application, but is a lot of work, especially for rendering
and GPU acceleration.

~~~
lubos
If your application relies on MFC, Webforms etc, then yes... it would be a lot
of work to port it over to Metro UI but this is not the case for web-browsers
where 99% code is already cross-platform and completely independent of GUI.

So for web-browser, this is not a matter of "porting". It's a matter of adding
new "chrome" for WinRT.

~~~
jbk
No, even the file and devices access are different. Direct3D, DxVA, Waveout
are different too.

Even without MFC or Webform, there is quite some work to do.

------
neworbit
That's a bit baffling. It seems like there are at least tens and probably
hundreds of millions of people who play flash games every day (Zynga being
rather happy about that). They may not be power users but they are everyday
consumers. A lot of that isn't going to be casually rewritten into HTML/JS.

~~~
dangrossman
Those people will quickly learn to use the "Use Desktop View" button where
their plugins still live.

~~~
justincormack
Unless they are on an ARM tablet in which case there is no option.

~~~
mappu
There have been several videos showing the classic interface on ARM tablets.

~~~
justincormack
Hmm, there have also been statements that the classic Windows APIs are not
going to ship on ARM. My guess is that it is possible, but it wont ship as
they wont be able to support legacy software anyway, as there is no
instruction set emulation. Guessing though, as I cant find a clear source...

~~~
dangrossman
There's Flash on plenty of ARM tablets and phones right now. Firefox and
Chrome could ship ARM versions with Flash for Windows 8 on ARM too.

------
smilliken
Title should be: IE10 preview doesn't support plugins. Silverlight still
exists in desktop mode IE10, and every other OS/browser configuration that's
currently supported, plus windows phone, xbox, and desktop silverlight apps.
(Though it would be nice if IE10 continues to not support plugins-- that would
seriously accelerate the push to native web development).

~~~
josteink
I thought Windows Phone 7 didn't support Silverligth in the browser and that
is was only intended for application (you know, App) development.

Please do correct me if this has changed and I am wrong.

~~~
HardyLeung
You are correct. Web-based Silverlight application does not run on WP7. You
can (rather easily in some cases) develop a WP7 app with the same codebase as
a Silverlight app though.

------
buff-a
Microsoft abandons silverlight, Sony announces Playstation Suite SDK written
in C#. This is topsy-turvy day.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2999086>

------
jmilloy
The author's claim seems to be simply false; his post explicitly says (quoting
Sinofsky):

"In Windows 8, IE 10 is available as a Metro style app and as a desktop app.
The desktop app continues to fully support _all plug-ins and extensions_."
(emphasis mine)

------
StrawberryFrog
If Microsoft is all-in on JavaScript on the web and desktop, I guess that
Google will have a _very_ hard time convincing them to switch to Dart instead.

------
tcarnell
It wasn't necesarily a bad idea to compete with Flash, but SilverLight was
about 10 years too late and offered no reason for the entire world to switch
from Flash.

Thus, the end of SilverLight was just a question of 'when', not 'if'.

------
Tichy
Hm, plugins have other uses than just displaying legacy data formats. I want
to be able to enhance the web sites I regularly visit. OK, and filter ads
while I am at it.

~~~
mcbarry
This is referring to runtime environments like Flash and Silverlight, not
browser extensions like Adblock.

~~~
Tichy
The original MS blog article that somebody linked seems to say "no plugins",
though. No Flash and no Silverlight is just a corollary of that. If they allow
extensions, how would they prevent Flash?

~~~
frou_dh
Presumably the extension API would be quite limited.

------
michaelpinto
Is this true? From the article: "The Metro-style browser in Windows 8 does not
support plugins: This means no Flash, no QuickTime, no PDF readers, and no
Silverlight. The companies that use Flash or Silverlight to augment their
websites are going to have the most trouble. Since they cannot simply port
their code to Metro they will need to need go rewrite the components from
scratch using HTML and JavaScript."

~~~
barista
Being a pre-beta version this could be a limitation of this build. But
nevertheless, Steve jobs has already talked about the problem with flash
performance/power consumption.

~~~
HardyLeung
This is NOT a build specific limitation. This is a decision already made (of
course can be reversed).

See this: [http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/09/14/metro-style-
br...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/09/14/metro-style-browsing-and-
plug-in-free-html5.aspx)

"For the web to move forward and for consumers to get the most out of touch-
first browsing, the Metro style browser in Windows 8 is as HTML5-only as
possible, and plug-in free. The experience that plug-ins provide today is not
a good match with Metro style browsing and the modern HTML5 web.

Running Metro style IE plug-in free improves battery life as well as security,
reliability, and privacy for consumers. Plug-ins were important early on in
the web’s history. But the web has come a long way since then with HTML5.
Providing compatibility with legacy plug-in technologies would detract from,
rather than improve, the consumer experience of browsing in the Metro style
UI."

~~~
edoloughlin
> Plug-ins were important early on in the web’s history. But the web has come
> a long way since then with HTML5.

Can you tell me how I record video or audio using HTML5 only? Even playing
more than a single audio sample and getting them to sync is a challenge.

~~~
richbradshaw
You could have used the device tag until 3 days ago when it was deprecated in
favour of the media capture api: <http://www.w3.org/TR/html-media-capture/>

It's not implemented anywhere yet, but it is part of the spec.

~~~
edoloughlin
Fantastic. I look forward to using it in 5 years :)

------
jslatts
All this consternation and speculation (and general negativeness) about a
completely alpha stage product is why Apple does not show their products
(much) before release.

Think about it. Now if you are Microsoft, you have to decide whether your
vision is good or if you should "listen" to what the market is telling you and
shift your strategy. Glad I don't have to make that decision.

~~~
jannes
Apple doesn't show their _hardware products_ much before release. With their
operating systems it's different. Remember, iOS 5 was announced a few months
ago and still isn't released yet.

------
imurray
It would be nice if Microsoft provided a non-silverlight interface to the
Feynman lectures that they have the rights to:
[http://blogs.msdn.com/b/escience/archive/2009/07/15/project-...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/escience/archive/2009/07/15/project-
tuva-richard-feynman-is-now-available-to-all.aspx)

------
Hominem
I have invested a lot of time into sivlerlight app. I think the best possible
outcome is that Windows 8 Metro will support silverlight natively and
silverlight apps will be sold in the app store. I always thought of
silverlight as a stalking horse to get people hooked on XAML and C# anyway.

------
nextparadigms
But if they are giving up Flash....does that mean they will start using WebM
in IE10?

------
iam
Even if Metro does not allow Silverlight plugins, it is still using WinRT,
which is using XAML UIs and more importantly developers can use C# to write
apps against it. So the knowledge isn't entirely lost, it's just transferred.

------
runjake
It should be noted before the usual MS flames roll in that Silverlight is an
umbrella product name for the underlying technologies. The same underlying
technologies that encompass WPF and Metro.

You'll still be using the same XAML/C#/etc

------
melling
Is Metro UI only for tablets? I was under the impression that was going to be
the default desktop UI too. In what mode will desktop IE run by default?

------
kaylarose
Is Netflix in-browser streaming still dependent on Silverlight?

------
Apocryphon
How much money did Microsoft sink into Silverlight?

------
melling
Steve Jobs once said that Apple and Microsoft are 100% of the PC market and if
they agree on something it becomes a standard. These days we need to consider
Google too. Anyway, it looks like HTML5 just became the "official" standard.

