Connecting Microsoft Silverlight and Adobe Flash

"If you look at Microsoft's website, you will find that it uses a lot of flash ......" Adobe CEO Bruce chizen and Microsoft once again tit for tat. In the field of electronic documents, Adobe and Microsoft started to compete a few years ago. As Microsoft officially launched Silverlight in September, the two sides will begin a new round of competition in the field of Internet rich media.
What is Silverlight? It is actually a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in that brings the next generation of media experience and rich interactive applications based on. NET to the network. It is also a new Web rendering technology, whether in a browser, on multiple devices, or on a desktop operating system (such as the Apple Macintosh, users can enjoy an interactive experience with rich content and brilliant visual effects.

Therefore, Silverlight has not yet been officially unveiled, but is already known as the flash killer. You know, when Adobe acquired Macromedia for $3.4 billion two years ago, it was just for flash. Now, flash generates more than 1/2 of Adobe's total revenue. This means that the release of Silverlight allows Microsoft to refer to the source of Adobe's core profit, and the competition between the two Parties will be upgraded immediately.

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From the development trend of the entire Internet, the form of expression has evolved from a single text form to 3D images, animation, audio, and video. "Now it can be said that it is the hi-fi web world ." At a recent Microsoft Silverlight preview, Lin Yi, director of the platform and Development Cooperation Department of Microsoft China Ltd., has begun to define the Internet world. It can be said that Silverlight has become an important part of Microsoft's Internet strategy, while Flash represents an important emerging market outside Adobe's traditional fields such as design and drawing.

In addition, the development trend at the internet technology level is control. Simply put, it means that the business is interactive. In this way, the development must be website personalization and technical richness. Of course, Adobe is aware of this: the transformation that flash wants to make today is from the network animation field to the application field. In Adobe's eyes, videos are not only edited by flash two years ago, but the entire workflow, including real-time editing, post-production, streaming media, DRM digital protection, and publishing. Microsoft's Silverlight is not just a client plug-in since its birth. It provides a flexible programming model that can be easily integrated into existing network applications. It has a complete set of development tools. Microsoft Expression suite, just launched by Microsoft last year for designers, can be combined with Microsoft Visual Studio for program developers through the XAML language to improve the efficiency of website applications.

Cheng shuhui, general manager of CCID Consulting Software Industry Research Center, said that integration is Microsoft's biggest competitive advantage. Expression suite provides a complete set of solutions from building webpages, animation design, and multimedia Asset Management. This solution provides a set of good tools for websites and art and design companies looking for breakthrough points in the competition, making it easier to lock users and locking users to lock the market competitiveness. The design tool kits of both parties are surprisingly similar: for example, the web designer and image designer in the expression suite correspond to Adobe's Dreamweaver and illustrator, expression blend is a professional tool used to create a Windows user experience to connect to the Web. It reflects the hybrid collaborative development and shows the interactive design function by name. In addition to powerful code-free interaction, front-end interface elements can also be directly associated with backend programming languages and code to process more complex interactions.

Competitive threshold

Of course, Flash has more than 0.7 billion of client users worldwide. It focuses more on IT professionals, creators, network designers, image designers, and other professionals. However, Adobe does not stick to the rules. One thing that has changed is that it gradually attaches importance to the low-end market. Look at YouTube, the world's largest video sharing website. It allows everyone to become a video publisher and everyone to become creative talents. Therefore, Adobe has also launched products such as Photobucket and remix, and is considering the commercial model of free software. Currently, important video sharing websites such as YouTube and MySpace use flash video player to play their videos. In addition. net, Visual Studio, and msdn are three major factors that Microsoft occupies the main market for program developers. However, the Mac platform is widely used by designers, which makes Microsoft Expression suite difficult to promote.

However, Silverlight, which will be officially available soon, also has its own superior technical features, making it more in line with the current needs of the Hi-fiweb world and higher commercial value. At the preview, Microsoft was most impressed by three features: Smooth HD video effects, support for search optimization, and commercial solutions.

High Definition Video

Due to the compression of the volume and the simplification of the encoding, a large amount of image details are omitted. Currently, videos in widely used video formats are not ideal, it is difficult to meet the requirements of long-time viewing. Silverlight supports HD (high definition), a video compression standard proposed by the Association of film and television engineers, based on Microsoft's Windows Media video (WMV-9 ). Therefore, Silverlight has high-definition video quality. With Windows Media Technology, the transmission traffic can be reduced by 46% and is compatible with the existing Windows Media traffic configuration solution. If you use the IIS media package in the Next Generation Windows Server System, the traffic will be further reduced. VC-1-encoded high-definition video can also be transmitted under the current network conditions.

In addition, Silverlight is very smooth in the playback effect. It delivers excellent video and animation effects and does not affect the quality of video playback because of transmission or playback of a large amount of content. This problem is a common obstacle for existing technologies, it also has a huge impact on the consumer experience. In addition, when Silverlight reads data and updates the appearance, it does not interrupt user operations by refreshing the overall page.

Moreover, the installation of the Silverlight browser plug-in is simple. The current preview version is about 1.36 MB. When a user encounters a webpage developed using Silverlight, the plug-in can be quickly installed. Silverlight's built-in video and animated advertising solutions are highly flexible. When transmitting broadcast-type videos or animated advertisements, they do not affect the quality of videos, this problem is a common problem of existing technologies.

Solving search Problems

One of the key technologies that flash cannot break through is its support for video search engines. In addition to the dazzling design and dynamic interaction, flash mainly targets the commercial purposes of the current website, especially video websites. Because page views are very important for the development of websites, and a large part of page views come from the search results. However, most video sharing websites currently use basically no SEO (search engine-friendly) technology, resulting in a low video search indexing rate. This is also a concern of many video sharing platforms. Although some websites use metadata to increase the number of indexed items, the results are not satisfactory.

The page description in Microsoft Silverlight adopts the XAML file format and does not compile it into a binary file. It naturally supports Seo. In addition, various resource files in Silverlight exist as separate files, rather than as embedded resource files of binary files. This is a very important technical commercial feature. That is to say, Silverlight is not only inferior to video design, but many users may become the first users of Silverlight because of the potential commercial value behind this important technology.

Technical and commercial value

Another technical commercial value of Silverlight is its low-cost solution. Microsoft Silverlight design tool expression is combined with Visual Studio. More than half of programmers in major companies use Microsoft's technology, while expression learning costs are relatively low, the combination of the two can break a common problem: design and development are based on different platforms, leading to technical barriers and high development costs. As the largest BBS technology supplier in China, more than 0.5 million independent websites in the world have adopted discuz! Technologies and products. Discuz! After using Silverlight, NT Product Manager Wang Bingkun believes that for developers, Silverlight can make full use of their existing. NET development technology, thus greatly reducing learning and training costs. In addition, the tool and server prices of the solutions widely used in the industry are very high, especially servers. The Silverlight background does not require server types. Therefore, Microsoft estimates that if we compare the price of a solution with unlimited traffic, the price is only one tenth of the price of mainstream solutions.

In addition, more and more Internet content providers are building their own online casual gaming platforms. However, due to the current situation of malware in China, many users do not dare to Download ActiveX controls, greatly reducing the popularity of online casual games. The unique nature of Silverlight can avoid this problem. At the same time, its inherent support for game features also makes it the first choice for online casual gaming platforms. Another example is that most of the common Windows Sidebar gadgets in the industry are presented in HTML format, with a single content. Silverlight can provide more diverse forms of expression, help increase user loyalty, and expand the profit model.