I got an email announcing an upcoming Utah Code Camp, scheduled for the last Saturday of this month. So I headed over to utahcodecamp.com and got this:
A giant black screen with small icon at the top center that said ‘Install Microsoft Silverlight’. Obviously I don’t have Silverlight installed and don’t really have an interest in installing it any time soon. Not one part of the site worked unless Silverlight was installed.
Through out the 1990s and early 2000s I worked hard to convince every designer who had discovered Flash, that no, they really don’t want to start creating every site in all Flash. It is disappointing to see this trend starting over again with Silverlight.
17 replies on “Silverlight Only at Utah Code Camp”
Silverlight is not Flash, they have some overlapping features, but both have some features that are not present in the other. I agree with you though, Air/Flex/Flash/Silverlight/Java/SVG/Google Gears all add to the complexity of web browsing. They certainly do not belong in email.
What’s more interesting is Adobe is starting to move away from Flash, they’ve abandoned SVG and Google is phasing out Gears. Microsoft is now a hosting mirror for jQuery and I suspect Java/MySQL are no longer important assets to Oracle. It’s going to be quite interesting to see how things play out over the next couple of years.
I got that email too. Shame it seems they don’t want any attendees who use Linux.
This isn’t about added complexity, it’s about locking up an entire site behind one required plugin. WIthout the Silverlight plugin the Utah Code Camp web site essentially doesn’t exist.
I made the comparison to Flash because I ran into many people over the years who wanted to build entire sites out of Flash. Same problem, different plugin.
Or anyone that doesn’t have Silverlight installed, which includes many Windows users as well. I really don’t know what they were thinking. What makes this even more frustrating is that this is from a group that is supposed to be technically savvy.
I completely agree with you.
Amen to that, buddy!
I would have understood if it was a Microsoft Developers event, but CodeCamp?! What were they thinking?!
Kevin,
The mono team has created a Silverlight plugin for Linux users called moonlight. The last time I played with it, it was more feature rich than its Microsoft Windows sibling.
Even the microsoft.com site works without the Silverlight plugin.
It’s nice that they have a plugin for Linux users, but that doesn’t change the core problem with building an entire site that is dependent on a plugin.
I took a look at their website (I have Silverlight because of Netflix, my wife needs her movie fix when we travel. :P) and they are doing absolutely *nothing* you couldn’t do w/ HTML/CSS. Even worse, Google won’t be able to parse *anything*, so people googling for the Utah CodeCamp schedule are just SOL.
The search result text for utah code camp for their URL is “Get Microsoft Silverlight.”
What did the site author’s say when you contacted them?
For a long time nothing, I just got a response the other day saying they created a separate HTML only version of the site. There’s now a “Click here to use HTML Only Version.” link on the site. Rather sad.
http://uxkit.cloudapp.net/
Made me think of you Joseph.
haha!
I hope you’re having a great time at my expense! 🙂
Look, our previous website was a Community Server site that was hacked and ruined! Just a few weeks before I had to build a new website and I had something free 6 hours in which to do it (volunteering my time, of course). I was also giving a presentation on Silverlight and did the new website as my demo project.
While I got plenty of complaints, NOBODY ELSE OFFERED TO HELP! I ended up taking a day off work (another 8-12 hours volunteered) to create an HTML version to stop the complaining from people that were more ideologically motivated than anything else. The HTML version wasn’t half as nice or functional and took considerably more effort to build.
As this was only a stopgap solution to begin with I’ve since re-written the site (donating roughly 40+ hours this time).
Next time perhaps you’ll offer assistance rather than putting up a blog post about how I am!
Thx!
If time was a concern why not just fix the Community Server install instead of starting over from scratch? As I recall that version of the site didn’t require a plugin in order to just view the site.