Attention: We have retired the ASP.NET Community Blogs. Learn more >
ASP.NET Hosting

New York Times abandons WPF and Silverlight in favor of AIR

The first version of the New York Times Reader was showcased in 2006 as one of the first and major WPF applications. Then, the Times Reader was ported to Silverlight, so it can work on non-Windows platforms such as Mac OS and Linux. The fact that WPF runs only on Windows was indeed a major concern for such a product.

The move to Silverlight was not a big success. The Silverlight version of the Times Reader suffered from technical issues and political rejection from Apple users.
There were hundreds of comments on the homepage of the Silverlight version. Roughtly half of them where related to technical problems, half to rejection. Many Apple users don't want to use Microsoft products.
Technical issues can be solved (over time), but solving rejection is another story (and I don't think it can be solved).

Version 2.0 of the Times Reader has been released recently, and what is interesting is that WPF and Silverlight have been dropped in favor of Adobe AIR.
No more political issues, a single code base, and less technical issues it seems.

This is a very interesting move. In fact, when I had to choose a technology for a new product a couple of months ago, I chose AIR too. As a .NET expert, I have of course considered WPF and Silverlight, but I had the same concerns as the New York Times.
A requirement was that the product should run on major platforms (Windows AND Mac at least), and even if Silverlight works on Macs, it was not a good choice for the same technical and political issues that the Times Reader faced. One big showstopper was the inability to create standalone desktop applications with Silverlight. It should be noted that Silverlight 3's out-of-browser mode won't be an answer to this because of its intrinsic limitations. AIR is much more powerful, with deeper desktop integration (such as file system access).

It will be interesting to follow what will happen over time, but in my book, Flash/Flex and AIR have a lot of advantages right now compared to WPF and Silverlight.
I believe also that the battle is not only on the Web and the desktop, but also on mobile devices. Something tells me that we'll see Flash on Android, iPhone and Pre before Silverlight. And that will make a big difference.

More about the new version of the Times Reader here, here and here.

Update: Here is the post that announced the original version for the Mac, based on Silverlight. I read a few months ago the comments made on this post. Have a look, it's very instructive. Oh of course, silly people posted comments there too...

24 Comments

  • I don't get it.

    Then why NetFlix is using Silverlight as their primary video streaming?

    For a novice like me it doesn't make sense.

  • Netflix has faced similar political protests when it switched to Silverlight and gave no option to revert back tot he old player.

    This is a huge barrier to Silverlight and most MS technologies. Even if they are cross platform Mac and *nix users are very reluctant and often hostile to using anything that comes from MS.

  • Linux and Mac users makeup less than 10% of the desktop market, I don't know why anyone is shocked when a software company chooses not to support them.

  • Yes, but which 10%. That makes a difference. Apple computers are priced at the high end. If an affluent customer is your target audience then Mac users may be more than 10% of your potential market.

  • "Linux and Mac users makeup less than 10% of the desktop market, I don't know why anyone is shocked when a software company chooses not to support them."

    As MT wrote, it all depends on who your customers are. What do you think designers use, for example ? PCs or Macs?

  • THis is a FUD posting.This is ridiculous. As an end consumer of a product, I should not care whether it is Adobe or Microsoft. It is a bit like saying that people who love PCs/Microsoft should reject Air. What were the actual technical problems? Tim Anderson's article, which you linked to, is a lot better than this. You make lots of comments of X being better than Y or certain limitations - but dont actually indicate what these are. This just causes FUD.

  • Why NetFlix uses Silverlight? Because NetFlix CEO is part of Microsoft Board.


    The newest AIR version includes a new thing called Text Layout Framework that allows you to easily create typographic and text layout features that would've normally been pretty difficult to create. I don't know if this is possible or not in SL.

  • Although the extra system access allowed via AIR might also be a reason it becomes a security issue as it gets distributed more. I think we have all been there and hopefully learnt a lot over the past decade.

    You really want a technology that users simply know is sandboxed from their system (as in when people use web browsers).

    Allowing this model in Silverlight 3, yet allowing desktop apps while keeping the same level of security, will make a huge difference to safety perception of downloading these apps - something silverlight 3 will have way over AIR.

    I am interested if you really think Adobe is investing the required resources in security for AIR and problems down the track....

    David

  • Scary - people won't use your app because it has Microsoft technology inside, which is somehow tainted by association. Many of the commenters on the Times blog also complained that Silverlight isn't open, which is absurd since OS X is a totally proprietary platform. Air is just as closed as well.

    Air is technically superior to Silverlight as a UI framework, especially with the new text layout engine. But I can't see building a real app (>10KLOC) in Actionscript, which is still a toy language on a toy VM with toy development tools. It's fine for cute little front end clients I guess, which is what everyone seems all excited about.

  • David, the advantage of AIR is not that you get access to the system and are running out of a sandbox. AIR allows you to write desktop applications with the same source code as your Flex web sandboxed applications, and in addition the desktop applications can run on multiple platforms.

    A good example of this is Balsamiq Mockups. It's available as a Flash browser application (mostly for trial purposes) and as an AIR desktop application (that runs on Windows, Mac and Linux). Both applications share the same source code base. The result is an application that runs on the web or on the desktop, and on multiple platforms without having to code multiple versions. That's the big thing.

    An AIR desktop app has to be downloaded and most likely installed, which makes it quite different from in-browser web apps. When you install something, you know that it may access your disk and private data.

  • As a Linux user, I don't want to use MS products. Why? Is not because I hate Microsoft, is only that MS is a last century company and don't understand, or don't want to understand that a lot of people don't use their OS, so they do products only on Windows.

    Am I 10% minority? Maybe(I don't think so, I have 4 machines I bought with windows[MS tax] that only have Ubuntu and Mac, MS says they are windows, they are not), but when I give advice to my 200+ engineering students, a lot of them choose another OS that is not MS, for us windows is a toy compared with Unix.

    New devices(netbooks) are going to came with Linux or mac derivatives in the future.You tell me f*ck you, you minority, I tell you f*ck you, nobody is going the Silverlight way(OS monopoly thinking)having AIR.


  • As was stated before there are market segments where the market share of Macs is much higher than 10%.

    Here at a 4 year college Macs are now at 25% of our resident students and have been gaining a couple points per semester. Linux is still at 1% among the same population. XP vs Vista is about 1:1 right now.

  • I am originally a .NET developer since 1.0beta and was really excited by Silverlight and WPF at first.
    But after the first years I must admit they are not at all the best technologies and options.

    I learned many platforms and languages including AIR in the past 2 years and if I have the choice I prefer AIR over Silverlight for the API, ease of use, installed base and features. Also your Flash experience is not wasted, Flash being installed in more than 90% of the browser by the way. And Flash will come to mobile phone too.

    Even for websites I am far more efficient and quicker by using Python/Django/jQuery for example that I am with ASP.NET, may it be ASP.NET MVC.

    For cross-platform desktop applications AIR is a serious option. If you need performance and cross-platform, C/C++ has my preference. However for a Windows only application, I will choose C#/.NET.

    But if 3 years ago we were only focused on making applications for Windows, the market changed a lot and now we have serious demand for Mac. And in the mobile market, with the iPhone, Android and others, .Net is becoming less and less relevant. And the mobile devices market is exploding, and will probably take over the computer desktop market soon.

    This may be sad, but it is true. We have to be realistic. The Microsoft strategy of tying .Net to the Windows platform is a failure for the framework.
    Mono is a nice alternative, but it is far from popular and sometimes in the uncomfortable position between Open-Source and Microsoft. With Microsoft full support, it will not become the cross-platform solution we are looking for. But could Microsoft lose its grip over .NET ? Not really his philosophy.

    Cheers,

    Richard
    http://sili.co.nz/blog

  • "Then why NetFlix is using Silverlight as their primary video streaming?"

    Congratulations, you're one step closer from understanding how the tech business works. Hint for the final step: it's not always about what makes most sense in a technical level.

  • "Something tells me that we'll see Flash on Android, iPhone and Pre before Silverlight."

    What tells you that? There are betas of both Flash and Silverlight on mobile devices going around, so it could go either way, or it could be close enough to not make nay difference. I suspect it's bias and wishful thinking on your part that tells you that.

    Silverlight is not as mature as flash, but it is making progress. Progress with users who on principle won't click on a button with a "Microsoft" logo, but who will accept Apple's iPhone and iPod lockdowns - that's a different issue, closer to tribal warfare than anything else.

  • Hey Fabrice,

    I'm glad to hear that you're building something with AIR. I hope it's done well for you. I'd love to get your thoughts on coming from a .NET background to the AIR world (are you doing Ajax or Flex/Flash?).

    =Ryan
    ryan@adobe.com

  • Hi Ryan,

    I'm not actually building something with AIR myself yet. This may happen soon, but the project I'm talking about here is developed by someone else.
    So, I don't have feedback to provide at the moment, but I may start to use AIR in a not so distant future.

    Fabrice

  • On a friendly note, here’s the thing with AIR. It can only be used commercially as a pretty face for content delivered over the net. It is extremely hard to find even a single AIR application sold in its own right as an alternative to any existing native desktop application. And there’s a good reason; it sucks performance wise (to name one thing). The cross-platform, poor implementation of a VM feature comes with a price. WPF on the other hand has the capability to tap into native code (yes, just Windows = 400 million PC's) and already we’re seeing tons of WPF applications sold and competing directly with native alternatives. This translates into money for software houses and new jobs created. Not everyone is an Internet shop. Don’t be surprised if in the future your AIR tools (Eclipse, Flash IDE) are written in WPF. Wake up and smell the coffee! AIR and The New York Times reader may be a good choice for their subscription based model, but don’t compare the two technologies as rival.

  • Correction: Actually Eclipse might not! :)

  • Hi,
    I have worked with the two technologies and I don't think they are directly rivals. This is the customers needs which eventually decide which one you are going to use. The Times has decided to switch from WPF/Silverlight to Air/Flex to satify all people (Mac, Unix included) and not because of the technology capabilities (we can do the same things with the two). The final user does not really care of which technology is used, he just want its applications to work and answer its needs. But even after this fact there are people which eventually don't want to use Microsoft technology, even if WPF were cross-plateform, because they hates its monopoly. It has already been said but Apple is at least as closed as Microsoft in some cases. We can take the exmaples of the IPod and the AppStore, same thing with the IPhone (interoperability).

    Romain

  • So that "different thinking" they were talking about really was bigotry? How interesting.

  • There will always be complainers. People should learn that the ones with the biggest mouth arent necessarily right.

    If a tech works for 99% of the people and 1% are religious anti-MS fanatics then it doesnt mean the tech is flawed. It means the 1% has other issues.

    When I read these forums I get scared by the fierceness of some posts. Definitely not people I would want to be crossing the streets with at night.

    And maybe just maybe Microsoft could have a good product on their hands for once. And maybe Netflix chose it because they wanted the best experience?

    If Adobe gets a client everybody cheers for the tech. If Microsoft gets a client everybody says they bought them. Go figure.

  • John G, I agree 100%. I have a few faithful mac luv'n friends who, in my opinion, have swallowed too many brainwashing Apple seeds.

    Today I make a living developing scalable & extensible Windows LOB applications for the largest US Electronics manufacturer, and my mac luv’n friends are still making banners, flyers, flash(y) UI stuff they did in college. Oh, and they still wear their pajama’s to the office, foot warmers/ sandals, and usually stumble in somewhere in the late afternoon, and work until 11’ish pm. They’ve told me that is a *mac thing*, and that I wouldn’t understand.

    My $0.02-

    The reality is simply this, the soon to be released SL4 dwarfs Adobe’s flash player with their ability to stream/distribute advanced HD media and network-based interactivity using Silverlight’s movie player.

    The only reason Adobe’s flash player is on 90% of computers today is because it’s been around a lot longer, so long, that the only thing anyone could do with FLV 1 was to create banners and dancing monkeys; remember?. That being said, Silverlight still has to make up for its long absence as a competitor to Flash, and it’s pathetic attempt with its first release did nothing to help its cause. It’s important to note that SL1 still did more than Adobe’s FLV1 banners and dancing monkeys. So, Silverlight has come a long, LONG way in a very short time span, and if Silverlight's improvements continue at current velocity (past 36 months), I can’t wait to see what SL5 has to offer.

  • The MS hatred is all an ignorant pose. People understood why they hated MS in the 90's. Most of those arguments are no longer valid. In fact, most of them are more appropriately applied to Apple now.

Comments have been disabled for this content.