Silverlight Forcing Macromedia to Rethink

Many Flash developers have been complaining about the choice of On2's codec over a standard like H.264 for years. Interestingly, Adobe is finally adding support for some standard video codecs in the next version of Flash. The question is, how much did Silverlight have to do with this decision? The timing sure makes it seem like a reactive decision. In any case, it's good news for video on the web.

[1] http://www.kaourantin.net/2007/08/what-just-happened-to-video-on-web_20.html#comments

4 Comments

  • this made me laugh, while I agree in spirit, i can't help but be skeptical. Saying that silverlight has made adobe reactive is a little silly...I mean, isn't silverlight itself a slow (mind numbingly) reactive move from Microsoft?

  • I would agree. I never actually sat back and thought "Oh thank god! Finally! An RIA application that goes back to its C# roots! That should be much easier than actionscript."

  • I agree Chris that for people that aren't C# nuts, the language isn't the selling point. However, Silverlight video has already been bought into by large customers such as BBC and MLB and it's not even officially released yet. I've been expecting an announcement like this from Adobe ever since Microsoft announced their strategy and I see no reason not to believe that they are reacting to Microsoft, since there was not even a whisper about any of this coming down the pipe in the previous builds of the Flash 9 player.

  • Silverlight can work with any CLR/DLR language,

    ie, python, ruby, c# etc etc, plus any new ones that you care to write.





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