Perfect timing. At our local Microsoft "Heroes Happen Here" event
yesterday I asked one of the guys presenting on Silverlight the
following question: "So when are we going to get the Silverlight out-
of-browser experience on platforms other than Linux?"
His response was "Use WPF," with another Microsoft presenter chipping
in with a comment about keeping the sales of Windows up.
Scott Guthrie accidentally let the Silverlight out-of-browser feature
slip out during his January '07 interview with Rory [1], but it seems
like they're backing off from that plan, especially with the codec
licensing terms for Moonlight. That's too bad. Maybe they're keeping
this feature reserved for when they need an extra boost, sort of like
Steve Jobs withholding the iPhone SDK for a year...
I'll be working on an application that will run on top of this. I'll
be looking at having a cross-platform solution too.
WCF udp is also needed as this is a Verse 3D protocol app.
As I mentioned in my Adobe AIR review (http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/ post/20080303-first-look-breathe-in-the-air.html) AIR doesn't allow
you to expose native libraries or extend the runtime, which sets a
very low ceiling for scalability. You are pretty much stuck with what
you can code in ActionScript or JavaScript.
I personally think that AIR has too many limitations to be useful for
large-scale application development, but what they really get right is
the application deployment model. Being able to install an application
on any platform with a single click is very compelling. It sounds like
minstall or something similar would be a great way to bring that
advantage to Moonlight.
One of the consistent criticisms of the Mono/Moonlight project is that
it is simply following Microsoft and giving some of their proprietary
technologies - including their a/v codecs - a toehold on the Linux
desktop.
The mopen functionality is a great chance to demonstrate the worth of
the Mono stack outside of what Microsoft is doing. Don't wait for
Microsoft to lead on this functionality. It should be ported so that
other stacks can use it as well. If it can get wide adoption,
Microsoft will be more likely to follow your lead. I think you
underestimate the power and influence that open source stacks can
have.
By the same token, standardize on freely available codecs. Make it so
that other platform-specific codecs *can* be called, but build in the
ogg/VC-2 functionality by default. Just like many games manufacturers
have standardized on OGG for patent reasons, give Silverlight
developers the chance to standardize on unencumbered a/v codecs.
One other idea - it may be worth looking into building the full-
functionality profile into a plugin for mozilla, like the pycomext
plugin. I know that there is already a plugin that gives access to the
silverlight profile. If would be very cool to allow xulrunner/prism
apps to use the full mono stack when creating their skins. XUL and
XAML aren't that far apart, and mozilla has already gone to the
trouble of opening up its dom for non-javascript languages. Why not
reuse that functionality?
> post/20080303-first-look-breathe-in-the-air.html<http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080303-first-look-breathe-in-t...>) > AIR doesn't allow > you to expose native libraries or extend the runtime, which sets a > very low ceiling for scalability. You are pretty much stuck with what > you can code in ActionScript or JavaScript.
Ah, this is a great resource!
I personally think that AIR has too many limitations to be useful for
> large-scale application development, but what they really get right is > the application deployment model. Being able to install an application > on any platform with a single click is very compelling. It sounds like > minstall or something similar would be a great way to bring that > advantage to Moonlight.
So I take it there are no APIs for accessing the local file system, they have not extended beyond the standard APIs that are available to Flash developers?
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