Microsoft Silverlight to come to S60
Published by Steve Litchfield at 7:38 UTC, March 4th 2008
Nokia has announced at CeBIT that it will make Microsoft's Silverlight (think Flash clone) available for S60, as well as for Series 40 devices and Nokia Internet tablets. Silverlight is a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering 'next-generation' media experiences and rich interactive applications. Microsoft will demonstrate Silverlight on S60 during the opening keyote at their MIX08 conference on March 5 and availability to developers is intended to be later this year. Read on for more details and analysis.
Rafe's comment:
Silverlight is Microsoft's entry into the cross platform web/multimedia run time space. Other technologies in this space including Adobe Air (runtime environment for building rich Internet applications, using Adobe Flash, Adobe Flex, HTML and Ajax) and JavaFX (JavaFX Mobile is of particular relevance). Nokia could also become a player in this area through its pending acquisition of Trolltech and its Qt technology.
Such technologies are used to build Rich Internet Appications (RIA). These are web applications that behave like and have the features of traditional desktop applications. Typically the have the user interface layer running locally, but the bulk of the application data and much of its processing is on a remote application/ web server.
Most of these technologies have or are planning to have a mobile component. The implementation details vary, but effectively they look to broaden the reach of these runtimes by making them available to mobile devices. As connected devices mobile are well suited to such technology. Moreover unified services that work across multiple platforms and device types (mobile / PC) can more easily be created.
The Silverlight announcement further burnishes S60's run time credentials. S60 runtimes now include Open C (with Qt for UI components coming soon), Python, Ruby (early stages), .NET (RedFiveLabs), Flash Lite, Silverlight, JME (Java), and Web Run Time (WRT).
Press release extract
The original press release is here.
Categories: Software, Industry, Events
Platforms: S60 3rd Edition
News Discussion
Silverlight is powerful stuff and worthy of its place amongst the other web tech, so people should try to see past their prejudice against MS and appreciate what it can do.
Awesome stuff.
Silverlight after all was the first to add 1080p video playback, albeit with their own codec solution, Adobe fought back with 1080p h.264, better suited for reducing licensing fees.
I'm not picking favorites this early in the game, don't forget Qt+WebKit = one powerful combination.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...th-webkit.html
However, it is recorded history that they have almost universally produced software that does not fit those requirements, and is often (usually?) an attempt to subvert the natural evolution of the market for their own devious purposes. We'll see if a leopard can change it's spots...
They have done so much good but have also done so much bad.
We'll see I guess! :)
| ... will, or should, succeed in the long run on mobile. .. |
Changing tack, I think its interesting to see Silverlight come to S60 relatively early. I would have thought Silverlight would get showcased on Windows Mobile first (I assume its on the way)... Still I guess it the same as Exchange, Messenger, WMDRM etc etc.
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Originally Posted by Rafe
Unfortunately should does not always mean will... There are going to be plenty of other factors in play. Microsoft's established developer base could do a lot for them... in the same way that Flash Lite seems to have been given a lot of impetus by the large Flash develop base / web usage of Flash. Technology rarely seems to use the most elegant solution.
Changing tack, I think its interesting to see Silverlight come to S60 relatively early. I would have thought Silverlight would get showcased on Windows Mobile first (I assume its on the way)... Still I guess it the same as Exchange, Messenger, WMDRM etc etc. |
The business unit that produces Silverlight is presumably targeted on licence revenue (most MS business units are in one or another). As the press release says, being on S60 gives them a potentially huge end-user market which gives possible Silverlight authors much more incentive to pony up for the authoring licence than the WinMob user base would.
Then add on top the licence fee from the device manufacturer. 10c per unit for 100M phones per yearr all adds up!
I know its a different thing, but given messenger on symbian had so many alternatives and still they charged for it...Im wondering.
Give the folks a chance, they have been trying to sort things out for years and they are making roads towards improvements. kinda unfair when people default to that "history of this and that..." comment even when what they see is actually quite interesting.
This announcement can benefit the proliferation of the platforms and technologies its being used on and with.
Let's face it, they didn't get a €1,4 billion fine for "doing the right thing"...
MS have a history of trying to split markets up, such as their spat with Sun about Java. While an alternative to Flash might be a good thing, it also fragements the market, and forces browsers to deal with ever-increasing numbers of media-types.
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Originally Posted by Unregistered
why are UIQ 3 users always left out? :(
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Ben