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by axod 6362 days ago
Will that work in firefox/safari/opera on windows?

Also, the web isn't composed of windows machines. It's a mishmash of a billion different devices. The vast majority of which, know html, javascript, and not much else. Seems a bad idea to only write for a small subset of them.
3 comments
Angostura 6362 days ago
Well, I'm a Mac user running Safari. Do I mind installing a free plug-in to get access to an interesting app? No.

I don't see where you (necessarily) get "small subset" from.

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axod 6362 days ago
You don't mind potentially making safari crash more? You don't mind adding to complexity, disk space used, memory usage, potential vulnerabilities?

I do. The less "installed" software I have to go wrong, the better.

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Angostura 6362 days ago
I don't mind making Safari 'potentially crash more' - I only mind if it actually does crash more. Since Safari crashes are very few and far between, and haven't noticeably increased since I installed Silverlight some time ago, this potential problem isn't high on my list of priorities.

I suppose I can always go back to Lynx if these things really bother me too much.

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cosmo7 6362 days ago
I've used Silverlight on Firefox (Vista, Windows 7) with no problems, not even having to restart the browser.

Silverlight is actually pretty good; it's a much easier experience for developers than Flash/Flex. You might hate Microsoft, but you shouldn't hate the tech.

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chaostheory 6362 days ago
it's hard not to hate the tech when historically MS makes their stuff ignore standards and evolve into something for Windows only.

Adobe, while not perfect itself, has been committed to keeping Flash cross platform. This makes Flash harder to hate than Silverlight despite the high cost of developer tools

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mattmaroon 6362 days ago
IE is still 70% of traffic. So, if you write something in Silverlight, and IE maintains that, you're going to work in 70% + however many non-IE clients have Silverlight or are willing to get it.

That will be most everyone. People will do just about anything you ask them to. The prevalence of phishing has proven that. They'll put their online banking creds into any site that has bankofamerica somewhere in the domain name. They'll buy Viagra from an anonymous email through a Costa Rican pharmacy. They'll most certainly click the button that says "Install Silverlight from Microsoft to watch the video".

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