Microsoft's SkyDrive Drops Silverlight

mikejuk writes "Microsoft's SkyDrive, a web service that provides cloud storage for end user files, has just acquired a revamped user interface — and it is HTML5 based. Yes, another Microsoft website has dropped Silverlight. How can Microsoft expect independent developers to base their future on Silverlight when Microsoft itself is abandoning it like a sinking ship? Whatever happened to 'eating your own dog food'? It seems that now Microsoft would rather eat dog food made elsewhere..."

Objectivity

[AndOne]

Whatever happened to posting stories that aren't filled with FUD and hate? Maybe HTML5 is more standards compliant and more widely available on other things... like say... Mobile devices... Which are probably one of the places many people would want to access the 'cloud' from. Or perhaps silverlight is too heavy for the task of being a portal UI... Whatever happened to using the right tool for the right job?

Re:MS hate

[Anonymous Coward]

http://riastats.com/

Silverlight is actually on 75% of Internet browsers.

Re:Netflix

[Anonymous Coward]

So that I can use it on linux?

Re:Best option

[RCGodward]

Indeed. Sometimes a better technology comes along. Let me toss you guys some top secret info... There will be another version of .NET, another version of Silverlight, and another version of WPF. Rest easy. It's not going anywhere.

Re:MS hate

[rtfa-troll]

MS embracing open standards and specs is a good thing.

Microsoft knows fine well that Microsoft always has three Es in embrace. They are not coming over to HTML 5 for the good of the standard of to help save the world. They are doing it in order to have developer tools which work on HTML 5 and so limit their loss of market share. Their long term aim will be to destabilize and misappropriate the standard. There is nothing good about Microsoft getting involved in any standard. Look at the history of OOXML [groklaw.net]. Look at how they attempted to take over Kerberos [networkworld.com].

This is not a sign that Microsoft has become good. It is a sign that they are too weak to force Silverlight on the world and they realise that now, so they will work with the standard for the time being.

Re:MS hate

[athmanb]

When Silverlight 1 came out in 2007, there were three competitors for it:
- ActiveX which was a horrible 90s idea and is unable to function in a world where you can't trust people not to try to build exploits
- Java which was so bad at doing what it was supposed to do that it went from almost 100% market share to almost 0% with the rise of Flash.
- Flash which did the job it was supposed to do but had horrible development tools and literally hundreds of security problems since then due to shoddy product quality

Microsoft created Silverlight to solve these shortcomings and they did a pretty good job at it. Programming web code in Visual Studio is a leaps better than Flash and the Netflix probably saved millions by not wasting their developers' time with the horrible Flash UI and code oddities.

Only now, four years later, is HTML5 beginning to come to a point where it can be a proper tool to do what you used to use one of the above plugins for.

And by the way, IT changes fast in general, no developer can honestly expect to code in the same language from college to retirement. HTML5 - and the languages that you actually write code in like JQuery - are in an extreme prototype state right now, going to change radically several times in the next years before people figure out that they completely screwed up some important paradigms and start parts of the standard from scratch for HTML6. Everyone will have to keep relearning their languages if they want to stay current.