... having Silverlight on my Windows machine, however Mycrotchsoft (©flybert2009) loses major credibility when you checkout the Silverlight site and play the stupid low res Expression 2 image editor video, which played full screen looks terrible

Expression Studio pages are worse .. errors abound ( in IE6, BTW ) and the "Tour" vid takes forever to buffer ( I have 300kbps+ down connect ) and buffers every few seconds, and for more time than it's actually playing .. honestly had to stop about 14 seconds in it was so bad

other bugs too .. checki it out

Expression Studio pages say you can use it to create content in the new "Siverlight 1.0" .. comethefuckon Mycrotchsoft .. you're directing, from Silverlight 3 downloads, developers that might be curious about Expression Studio to crapass funky presentation on pages created, I would suppose, with your own tools ?

at least get the shit to work on your own websites with your own web browser .. idiots ..

is the Linux version??????

Installed pretty slick for me.

I am interested in what Office Web applications actually turns out to be. It sounds like it has potential, but I've heard some muttering about it being pretty limited and tied into SharePoint, which sounds like a MS strategy and changes things a bit

...it'll work with ie6 ? And all linuxes too?

Have to give it to them the picture quality is A1

Doesn't work on Opera.

Finally, the ability to run SL as a standalone app or in the browser without a lot of faffing.

Now for all the posts from Linux evangelists about how crap it is despite never having used it!

Went to the download page in Opera, didn't like that, no version for linux. Another peice of proprietory bloatware I don't have to worry about.

Will this new tech be compatible with browsers other than Internet Explorer? Will there be a GNU/Linux or FreeBSD or (insert name of favourite O/S here) ......... version?

The web is supposed to be about getting information out there to people, making it as accessible as possible. I'm guessing this will only be available to a subset of internet users.

So, what's the benefit for me? I'm not going to download something just for the sake of it. What does Siverlight give me that I can't achieve without Silverlight?

I can see MS facing an uphill battle here.

And why does Office online need it? What's wrong with HTML 5? Or is it that IE8 makes such a pigs ear of applying standards that MS figured it would be easier to develop a whole new AIR environment to see off Google Apps (disclaimer: I don't use Google Apps either).

In summary: what's the fecking point of this?

Flash is already everywhere and Silverlight can't go everywhere Flash can. Game over.

@RichyS

What's wrong with HTML 5. It's HTML, that's what wrong with it.

The point is that there are a lot of .Net developers out there that would love to be able to develop really good looking and interactive web apps and without Silverlight there is no easy way for them to do that without having to learn to code in Flash etc. Silverlight allows these developers to use their already existing skills and as a bonus to Microsoft it keeps them tied in to using Microsoft tools etc.

From a user persepctive it will hopefully lead to some decent web sites / apps that look great and have tons of functionality. Installing it is a no brainer for most users (those using windows and IE).

Yes it would be nice if we all used standards that meant anything and everything could be viewed no matter what platform you were using but I suspect world peace and a end to all hunger will arrive long before then. Personally I like a multiplicity of choices, life would be boring if we all did the same thing.

...or does every SilverLight enabled site crash my browser the moment you try to navigate away? This seems to happen in every browser I have tried but especially in Opera. Every single time, no matter what size the SilverLight applet is, it crashes. I don't recall flash being that bad.

Still; only interesting thing I've needed SilverLight for is the Gigapixel images from Kolor that use SilverLight to drill into the panoramas (which once done, crashed my browser... joy).

Thank you for your interest in my browsing experience. I have reviewed what you are offering and have decided not to take up your offer of a free plug-in. I'm sure I won't miss out on anything significant.

But thanks again for asking.

@AlanBourke

What's wrong with HTML 5. It's HTML, that's what wrong with it.

Alan - if you think that Silverlight is superior to HTML then you are certainly unqualified to discuss the merits of browser pugin technologies.

W3C technologies enable information, styling and application behavior to be implemented across any browsers that follow their standards. As a professional web developer, I can see enormous merit in developing applications to these standards and then seeing them work perfectly first time in Opera, Safari, Chrome, Firefox (and on the mac, linux, windows and mobile phones). The final thing I have to do as a web developer is add it conditional style sheets, and tweak the javascript to accommodate the short comings of IE6, IE7 (and even IE8 in some cases). Now what does this say about the W3C in comparison to Microsoft - it says that they don't have an OS agenda where as Microsoft DO.

If you have poor moral standards and think that supporting monopolies is OK then carry on blowing your trumpet for the OS agenda inspired Silverlight.

Personally, I will carry on creating professional web applications which work on EVERY web browser and every platform.

Also, your claim that Linux developers slag Silverlight off without understanding the technology is completely false. I understand the technology perfectly well and I can see that there are some merits to the architecture when compared to some areas of Flash. However, Adobe have at least made a stable 32bit and 64bit plugin for Linux.

Whether you like it or not, Linux has a big future and it is completely irresponsible to develop web sites or applications that are unlikely to function on it. A big part of web development is accessibility - if the site will never work for 1% of operating systems then you are making the site in-accessible for those users.

SEG - drawing an analogy between web standards and world peace is retarded.

We already have a web where pretty much every web page will work perfectly on any operating system and web browser (besides those old activeX infected sites that professional web developers mock regularly). This is because the W3C do a fantastic job of developing and standardising the technologies that make the web work.

So what you are really saying is that its OK to take a perfectly good model for the WWW and shaft it by introducing OS vendor lock-in technologies.

Its uneducated people like you who make the minority of websites bad. Simply developing internet distributed applications in Silverlight because its easier is a completely unacceptable reason for using it. In my opinion xhtml, css, svg and javascript are easy technologies - really what you are saying is that their are a minority of wannabe web developers who can't be bothered to learn how to do the job properly. Its these kind of cow boys that sour the IT profession in general. To these lazy gits I say, take your finger out and visit w3schools.com