Microsoft plays nice on the web, heading for Eclipse?
I read a number of Microsoft related articles in the passing weeks that really surprised me. It seems that there's a different wind blowing from Redmond. The best way I can describe it is that Microsoft is trying to fit in the Web ecosystem rather than reinvent it. They do innovate, but they finally understand that they're not operating in a vacuum. When it comes to the web, they're not the biggest player out there.
Two major developments that we've seen:
- IE8 will finally be based on standards and will render pages by the standards as a default. True, the first thing that all the nonstandard sites will do would be to tell IE8 to use "IE7 standards". So, it's not that big of a deal, bug it's a step in the right direction.
- Silverlight is released simultaneously for Mac OS X and Windows. Linux and mobile devices support is on the way.
The battle for Silverlight dominance is not going to be easy. The main opponent is Adobe AIR. The tools are racing to become mainstream by getting an increasingly large sites be based a particular platform. Adobe got a head-start with Flash and they will not give up without a fight.
There are two aspects here: technology and marketing. I'm not a marketing person, so I'll focus on the technology. Even I can see that, to market their product, they need all the right answers to the technical questions. Back in the 90s, when ActiveX was introduced, when you asked: "Will my ActiveX-based site support Mac/Unix?", the answer was: "Dude, we are Microsoft". These type of answers just don't cut it anymore. Even Microsoft realized it and they offer broad support for a wide range of end users.
There's still a question of the development tools. There are many web designers and developers using different platforms. Mac OS X is very popular among creative professionals and freelancers with no corporate obligations (like myself). Adobe is providing all the right answers with cross-platform development tools: Dreamweaver CS3 and Aptana Studio Adobe Air Eclipse Plugin, which is free (at least in the base version) and open-source.
Microsoft is saying: use Visual Studio or Expression Studio. Expensive tools. Windows only. Hmmm... not quite the answer developers are expecting.
On an entirely different note, a Microsoft executive is scheduled to give a keynote at the EclipseCon conference next week. He will probably focus on interoperability between Microsoft products and Eclipse.
Are we going to see a Silverlight development tool based on Eclipse? Let's wait and see.
