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Note: nothing of actual use follows. Just a few thoughts about the plugin formerly known as WTF/e. (What The Frak/everywhere)
The first thing I thought of when I saw that Microsoft had renamed WPF/e was, “Amazing, they picked one of the few English words that have no rhyme.” Not that it matters but I know how anal those marketing folks can be about naming things. They’ll probably call a staff meeting to discuss the global socio-economic ramifications for using non rhyming words in a product name and how that will impact product penetration along the Asian rim.
The name that they ended up with – no, I’m not going to use it – just slides off the memory cells somehow. Kieth Peters noticed the same thing.
On a less technical note, I gotta say, I HATE the name. I can’t ever get it right. I’m stumbling over Sparklelight, Sprinklelight, Silverfish, etc. before I spit it out. John Grden suggested “Steely Dan”, but we won’t go there…
Then I did a search for Silverfish + ‘the other name’ and found that a few others are having just as much trouble remembering the name as myself. And I swear as the god Apollo my witness that I independently used the name Silverfish in some comment on someone’s blog in the past few days.
Without having any experience developing with Silverfish I’ll wager that no one can create a custom video interface with it as fast as I can with Flash/video.Maru. (Shameless plug but hey, it’s my fraking blog.)
I don’t have anything to add when it comes to actually testing Silverfish’s capabilities or development environment because I don’t plan on installing the player much less developing for it. I’m backed up with Flash jobs as it is and I don’t think anyone’s going to pay me my freelance rate to learn Silverfish for them.
If you, dear reader, happen to be a Microsofty and want to accuse me of being an Adobe fan-boy who doesn’t know half of what I think I do then let me save you the trouble. You’re right. Point made. Now move along.
LOL. too funny. Then I did a search on “microsoft silverfish” and came up with this:
http://www.denounce.com/msbugs.html
Funny name aside… there are a few other reasons Silverlight is going to have a tough time making a go at it… http://visualrinse.com/2007/04/16/why-microsoft-silverlight-will-fail/
I think MS will easily get the plugin rolled out. But I don’t see that as a problem. The problem I see is, ‘What incentive is there to switch development platforms?’.
I just don’t see attrition of Adobe Flash and Flex devs for the sake of using a new tool unless there is really good reason to do so.
I am a Flex junkie myself. It’s very difficult to take anybody seriously who just disparages a product based on a name and says things like:
“Without having any experience developing with Silverfish I’ll wager that no one can create a custom video interface with it as fast as I can with Flash/video.Maru.”
In your words “What the frack?”
If you want to criticize something, get to know it first. Then list all the things you found wrong with it (and I assure you WPF/E is richly flawed at this time).
You give Adobe fan-boys like me a bad name with un-educated slander.
I’ll move on now!
>What incentive is there to switch development >platforms?
None – just don’t forget there’s a lot of .NET/Visual Studio type people out there thinking the same thing about AS3/Flex/Flash – but interested in delivering the same type of software.
Hi JulesLt,
Different blog, same topic. :)
My point is Adobe has a product (right now) for sale. MS does not. I’d say user adoption is fairly one sided at the moment. Just hope that no one who worked on Zune has anything to do with Silverlight related software or they are doomed. :)
@Galt, I think I set the tone with the first paragraph of this post. I don’t think it’s slander so much as just poking fun at Microsoft. Believe me, if I wanted to slander I would have been scathing but there’s no need for that. This is just me having silly fun.
And BTW, I can make a custom video interface with volume controls, play/pause, and dragable playhead that all works in 2 minutes. So no, I wasn’t joking about the challenge. I’ll throw in a video reflection and still be done in 2 minutes.
@Brandon, I agree that there is little incentive for Flash devs to pick up Silverfish. What does it do that Flash can’t? True, someday – not now – Silverfish is going to have DRM capabilities but so will Flash.
For me there are only 2 1/2 reasons to pick up a new technology:
1. It’s fun to learn cool new things that can do more than what you know now. Case in point: AS3.
2. I need to learn some new thing in order to make money.
2.5. Someone is going to pay me to learn.
Right now #1 is pretty much the driving force in learning for me because #2 isn’t an issue. #2.5 would cost someone a tone of $$$ with very little return.
@Keith, where in the frak did you dig that page out from? That’s hilarious. I even did some searching to see if it was a real story see as though it was reported in 1996. Hilarious!
@Chad, I read your post. Much more eloquent and informative than this one. But that’s probably just because you’re more eloquent and informed than myself. :-)
oz, not at all… I just jumped on this because I’ll need to have answers for my co-developers when they get back from NAB. It’s likely they’ll see the video dripping Silverlight as a good technology, but I’ll need to pull them back into reality.
@chad, keep preaching the good word. :-)
Seriously, thanks for your post. It’s exactly the sort of information that we can all use to keep the light on Flash.
I think Oz is just having fun making an Onion-style humor piece. I don’t think he is seriously digging insults out his ass. You can’t really put down something you haven’t tried.
I’ve been developing with c# for six years now. I’m happy to have another tool to use. I just don’t see any reason to switch up.
Microsoft’s technologies are *usually* not the problem. Their problems tend to relate to the methodologies used to create applications. The amount of baggage their software seems to carry hurts them more than anything else.