Incremental Blogger

Joshua Allen interviews Gavin Gear of Microsoft at Mix07 about Silverlight’s new inking capabilities.

I was running into the problem where Silverlight was not working in IE on my Tablet PC. It would work just fine in Firefox, but not IE. Each time I’d try to view a page with Silverlight in it, I’d get the graphic indicating that Silverlight was not installed. I’d click on the link to install Silverlight and it looked like all would go well, but when I’d try refreshing the page with Silverlight, I’d get the same graphic saying that Silverlight needed to be installed.

The problem turns out to be due to the fact that I previously had the February Silverlight CTP installed on my system and one of its DLLs needed to be re-registered.

Here are the steps to follow on your machine if you can’t get Silverlight working on your system:

1. First, make sure that only one instance of Silverlight is installed on your system. To do this scan through all your installed apps in the Control Panel. Uninstall any older versions of Silverlight, if needed.
2. In Vista, you’ll want to Run launch the DOS prompt using Adminstrator priviledges. To do this, click on the Start menu, select All Programs, then Accesories, then right click on “Command Prompt” and select “Run as Administrator” in the context menu that appears.
3. In the console window that pops up, change the current directory to where you have Silverlight installed. Typically this is:
cd c:\Program Files\Microsoft Silverlight
4. Register the Silverlight DLL npctrl.dll in the Silverlight folder by typing at the console prompt: regsvr32 npctrl.dll.

If you get an error dialog with the message: “The module “npctrl.dll” was loaded but the call to DllRegisterServer failed with the error code 0×80070005,” then this means that you did not have permission to access the DLL as needed. Most likely you launched the command prompt using non-Administrator priviledges. To fix this problem, go to Step 2 in the steps above.

Once you do this, you should be able to run Silverlight in IE.

I seem to have an odd problem with one of my machines. I can run the Silverlight demos (made available at Mix07) just fine in Firefox, but they don’t work in IE 7. Instead of the apps running, I simply get the bitmap suggesting that I download Silverlight–of course, I already have Silverlight installed. I can get Silverlight to work just fine on my other machines within IE.

I’ve tried restoring all the settings in IE as well as uninstalling and re-installing Silverlight. All my updates appear to be current too. I am running Orcas and a handful of other betas related to Microsoft’s programming technologies. Hmmm.

Microsoft blogger kurt Shintaku provides 10 reasons why he believes that Silverlight will succeed–particularly in a world of Flash (I’ve condensed some of his bulleted items):

1. Silverlight isn’t about copying Flash…”Silverlight is about providing a continuum for developers/designers/CTOs across the full Microsoft developer/designer product offering.”
2. Silverlight provides copy protection.
3. Silverlight provides “quality experience”.
4. Silverlight and Flash can coexist.
5. There are more Microsoft developers than Flash developers.
6. Total cost of ownership is less than that with Flash.
7. Many platforms possible.
8. Different technology.
9. Simple internationalization.
10. Can “upscale” to “more robust” client.

Hmmm. Whereas I agree that Microsoft can leverage its user base, developer community, and partner relationships to gain market share, it’ll be interesting to see how “accepted” Silverlight becomes–particiularly on the content provider side. For instance, will Microsoft on the first day’s launch of Silverlight, switch all of its Flash content on its site to Silverlight? Does it need to?

One point worthwhile making here is that Silverlight in itself should not be the end all here. In the ideal world, it’s capabilities should be transparent to users–hopefully built into the browser, which is easy enough to do in IE as well as Firefox if Microsoft really wanted to. A download is fine, but aren’t we really talking about lagging technology in the browsers? Didn’t Flash’s adoption grow because multi-media support and graphic support and (now) programming support within the browsers has been disappointingly poor? Same goes for PDF. Is a plug-in really the baseline for a core technology that people are seeking?

OK, that’s an issue that’ll get resolved over time. For now, Flash and Silverlight are best handled as downloads. No doubt. But let’s not lose sight of what’s going on here. I never wanted Flash. I don’t think most people have. Flash never would have grown as it has had browser innovation kept marching on. Ultimately we don’t need a Flash download replacement. We need progress in what the browsers can do. We need to be able to go beyond what we have today. To me, that’ll define the true success of Silverlight–or any other new technology. Enable more users to do what they want. Enable more people to “develop” even if they really aren’t developers. Enable more people to author, create, and inspire with their content. Do all or some of this and make it ten times less expensive and ten times easier to do and you might just have a winner.

In my book, Silverlight will be successful because of the sites and experiences that it makes practical, which were not practical before. YouTube leveraged Flash to provide an “it-just-works” video experience. This was a complete pain to do in the browser without Flash. What might Silverlight enable with its technologies? What about live broadcasting? Live broadcasting (using sites like Stickam and UStream.tv) was a big topic this last week. Does Silverlight video capabilities enable or enhance this? In what ways might a small, two person company leverage Silverlight video to create a broadcast community unlike anything before? Live switching of multiple cameras? Picture in picture? Real-time effects? Titling? Or what about customizable video delivery, such as Dave Winer is contemplating? This is one area I might look to when assessing Silverlight technology. There are tons more.

Kirupa is close, but it goes further: The success of Silverlight will not simply depend on the number of companies that replace Flash with Silverlight on their sites. It will depend in larger part on the number of new sites and services that finally become feasible because of Silverlight. That’s the challenge for Microsoft. That’s what developers should be looking for in it.

Open Source officionado Miguel de Icaza (from Novell) shares his thoughts on Microsoft’s new browser-based technology, called Silverlight, and where it fits in with the Linux world and Open Source in general. A good read.

I like his bullet-list breakdown of the technologies in Silverlight:

* An object oriented canvas, this canvas can be controlled trough the DOM by the containing web page.
* The contents of the Canvas can be preloaded with a XAML-based description. The XAML supported is a subset of the full WPF/Avalon supported by .NET 3.0.
* So far it offers no built-in scripting, instead it relies on the browser’s Javascript engine.
* It supports video playback using the highly proprietary VC-1 formats.
* Silverlight is cross platform in the “Windows and Apple are supported” way, no support for Linux has been announced. So it is even more limiting than Flash.

I think he’s right to see the declarative approach to the UI which Silverlight provides as a worthwhile technology to adopt or at least emulate. Microsoft is onto something with its XAML technology. It’s still a work in progress, but it’s on a good path.

It’s also interesting to see how Miguel approaches the VC-1 video support within Silverlight and how he believes that rallying behind Flash and its video support is a better choice for the Linux/Open Source community. (The Silverlight CTP does not support Linux and Microsoft has only said publicly that they might consider supporting platforms other than Windows and Mac for Silverlight.)

So what should Microsoft do, if anything? All eyes will be on Mix07.

This week Microsoft announced part of its plans for Silverlight, a browser-based technology that brings higher quality video and potentially richer browser interaction to Windows and the Mac.

What about Linux support? So far, there isn’t any in the current Silverlight community builds. Don Dodge tries to answer the question as to why Linux was left out of this announcement in a response to a question on his blog:

“Does Linux have meaningful market share on the desktop? My guess is around 2% but I really don’t know. Server share is another matter of course. But, when releasing desktop software companies need to think about support costs for multiple OS…and market share.”

I have seen references elsewhere on the Internet from Silverlight team members that other platforms and devices are being considered. I hope they are.

My guess is that the decision to not support Linux up to this point is a business one, like Don suggests. I’ve been in a couple startups that had to make similar decisions. Engineering plays a role in how cross-platform/cross-browser to make a new product, but the decisions often come down to business opportunity, needs, and practicalities. I hope the engineers–or at least one engineer–doesn’t take the business thinking too seriously though and leaves the door wide open for Linux support or decides to ask for forgiveness and implements it anyway.

I think Microsoft would do much better with Linux support–or at least a demonstrated commitment to it–out of the gate. That’s what the web world expects.

Here’s the problem with Don’s number theory: When it comes to the Net, the Linux folks have a disproportionate voice. It’s a voice with quite a few early adopters. It’s a voice aligned with some major websites. To ignore these customers–and yes, even Linux enthusiasts are or at least can be Microsoft customers–is a mistake and signals to me that someone doesn’t get it.

Here’s what I would do if I were Microsoft, between now and Mix07 (where Microsoft says more details about Silverlight will be announced), I’d do all I could to at least get a Linux demo going if not a CTP. It would be OK if a Linux CTP is on a separate track than the current Silverlight CTPs, but demonstrating something, releasing something, is far better than indirectly suggesting that Linux might be supported, sometime.

Today at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), Microsoft formerly annonced its latest technologies for developing rich browser-based experiences, which it calls Silverlight—previously known as WPF/e (Windows Presentation Foundation Everywhere).

Tim Sneath of Microsoft has more on the details about what Silverlight is. Microsoft has a

First, about the name change, does this fortell that WPF/e’s heftier cousin WPF will soon be given a name change too? Maybe “Silver”? Heh. A more likely outcome that this points out is that we have two technologies that are diverging. I hope not though. On the programming side we’re still talking about some runtime and a programming model that supports XAML. Same goes for the original Windows Presenation Foundation. Call me silly, but I’d like to see consistent naming across these technologies. No biggy, though. I can get used to any name. Others see the name as being quite positive.

Anyway, today’s announcement doesn’t really add that much to what was already known about WPF/e, eh, Siilverlight. For instance, Silverlight will run in IE and Firefox on Windows and Firefox and Safari on the Mac. Also, a CTP is available for download and experimentation.

However, Microsoft promises further details on Silverlight at Mix07. In particular, Tim Sneath says there will be a “big surprise” at Mix. I hope it includes additional OS and/or device support. Supporting Windows and the Mac is good, but it’s not exactly the definition of ubiquity. What are you going to say to kids running the OLPC computers? Use Flash?

One thing is for sure, video playback via Flash has caught on big–particularly because it provided a way for video to “just work” in browsers, something that was a pain early on. Silverlight is one step on the path to providing a Microsoft alternative. We’ll have to see how it works out.