Come on guys, lets get this one kicked! ;-)

I hope and expect that they won't dominate the web. We are just starting to recover from the mess that IE has made with the web.

Aw, come on Gav.
I've been in this a long time and think it would only be fair to target that comment against IE6.
Look what we were going through when Netscape 4 came out.
We couldn't use half of our off-the-ground XML and first-birth xHTML.
Did you ever do a hex dump on the frontpage DLL back then? "Netscape developers are wienies" was too funny.
Every single ASP developer I knew back then said the same thing, IE was the best tool for our platforms.
Then the competition came out.
Then the dark years of IE6.
OK, everyone is screaming at Msft about the new modes in IE8 but overall it is a brand new Web 2.0 product.
And it will once again make IE the well dressed kid on the block.

Interesting article, thanks.

"Looking at the landscape today, you see a world that has 98% of the machines that access the Internet Windows (Microsoft) based. "

"Web Sites also work better on Windows."

Delusional.

The problem with IE has been the strategic non support of standards - MS tried to lock in web sites to IE and the windows platform and they were quite successful. When I am working on web UIs much of my day is spent working around IEs broken support for standards.

I think silverlight is a nice product and it may do well in against Flash in the niche area of embedded applications, but it is not going to take over the web. Standards based web browsers will be the platform for the next 10 years in my opinion.

My hope is for SilverLight as a Flex-killer.

Look what Andy's done with Silverlight already: http://www.andybeaulieu.com/

Standards? Gosh, just hearing that word makes me cringe.
I remember spending a fortune to be HST standard compliant.
Then another fortune to be ISA standard compliant.

We're so dog'goned competitive we'll never have stinkin standards.

Case in point, some of the Presidential election results later this year will still be tabulated via hand counts.

Being HST and ISA compliant have nothing to do with web development whatsoever. Neither do election tallying methods.

We use standards in development all the time, they are supported so universally in fact that we take them for granted. IPv4, TCP, UDP, HTTP, DNS, FTP, POP, SMTP, IMAP, TELNET, LDAP, WS-*, Kerberos, RSS, Atom, OpenID, ECMA C#.... the list goes on. None of what we do today would be possible without support for these in all the different stacks that we deploy our applications on.

Silverlight is great. I just don't think that it is going to allow MS to dominate the web.

We're really milking this one but yes...
I wasn't referring to Web standards, just the way large companies within the U.S. and otherwise still refuse to agree to standards.

I was with UofM when some of those protocols were developed, then later them for security in ASP commerce sites.

Back in the 80's we had protocols that didn't make the cut but worked better than the current stateless garbage we did adopt to.
By 1988 we had file resume and authoritative handles built into many of the protocols that were used.
And now the stateless Internet is in any shape to adopt new standards?
I'm still behind Microsoft 100% and do not fault them for what happened as a result of competition in a blood thirsty market.

I thought Silverlight was explicitly not allowed to be used as desktop apps? (ala Flex)
IMO, this would be the ultimate strategy if MS wanted to win on the web. But I see how that it compromises the windows strategy.

WPF is better for desktop apps as it is aimed to replace WinForms. Silverlight is practically just a subset of WPF so there's really no reason to use it for desktop apps. Once you learn other, it is easy to switch between Silverlight (2.0) and WPF so they support each other well.

Hi All,

Thanks for Kicking the article, It was meant to be a fun article to stir some arguments and comments. That said, the point of the article was:

1. With Silverlight, Rich RIA applications that we should all be demanding at this point, are now possible.
2. Giving developers great software development tools is critical to making a technology take off.
3. I firmly believe within the next 5 years, Silverlight and WPF (Really, the same thing) will be everywhere.
4. We have not seen any major earth shattering advancements on the web in years! It's about time!

Thanks for stopping by the blog! Leave comments I love hearing them!

Miguel