Having covered the news yesterday that Silverlight will (sometime this century) be available on Windows Mobile and select Nokia Symbian devices, I’m extremely disappointed to discover a few realities.
I’ve now watched yesterday’s Mix08 T12 Session (not a great session with projector issues, drawn out introduction, boring demos and of course disappointing news).
With regard to their current (pre-CTP) implementation:
- It’s Silverlight 1.0
- It runs in Pocket/Mobile IE
- It uses JScript for scripting – no .NET!!!! – so much for the closed loop now.
- It doesn’t have a common codec; it uses the devices available codec, going against one of the selling points of Silverlight being cross-platform.
- It runs on Mobile 6.0 – PDA and phone devices
- It uses Windows Mobile Player on the device to play movies – you can’t have alpha blending of video – this one is fair enough I suppose.
The presentation included comments about taking out the .NET code and putting in JScript, like this was a trivial thing.
The big selling point of Silverlight 2.0 is .NET development on the desktop, browser and server, plus WPF on the desktop/browser. This is a step back and it hasn’t even got to CTP yet.
They demo’d WPF/E (the former name for Silverlight) over two years ago at a PDC on a mobile device. What has Microsoft been doing for 2 years with this???
Their roadmap:
- Silverlight 1.0 for mobile CTP Q2 2008
- Silverlight 1.0 for mobile RTW Q4 2008
- Silverlight 2.0 for mobile CTP Q4 2008
- Silverlight 2.0 for mobile RTW Q2 2009
zZZZzZz !#$%#%$
Hey Colin, just wanted to say I’m glad to see you back blogging again
Comment by Mack D. Male — Thursday March 6 2008 @ 18:19
Thanks.
The blogosphere seems relatively unexcited by Mix this year, but I thought ‘why not’ since I covered it last year.
Comment by colinizer — Thursday March 6 2008 @ 20:58