Letters from Readers
Reader Feedback: HTML5, Windows 8 and Silverlight
Readers discuss the December Papa's Perspective column and Andrew Brust's take on the ways Windows 8 will affect Silverlight.
In a December Papa's Perspective column, John Papa offered a five-minute tutorial on HTML5 canvas. A reader responds:
As always a great article, but it's too bad HTML5 doesn't have objects, such as Rectangle, that you can apply a transformation matrix to in order to perform a rotation. Yes, I know you can use context.translate, but this isn't nearly as elegant as Silverlight, where you translate the object. As usual you can do the job in HTML, but it would've been nice to be more object-orientated.
John McFetridge
Posted Online
Windows 8 and Silverlight
The platform debate continued as readers weighed in on Andrew Brust's December Redmond Diary blog, "What Does Windows 8 Mean for Silverlight's Future?"
Finally, I've been saying this till I'm blue in the face -- all the signs pointed to it -- I'm so glad you posted this article. This definitely clears up why Azure is built using Silverlight and why it complements deployment of Silverlight and MVC applications and Web services. After I downloaded the Windows 8 Dev Preview, I was able to instinctively start building applications. There are a few changes, but they seem more like upgrades.
Jay
Dallas
If this is true: "The new technology involving WinRT and Metro involves a name change from Silverlight." I say fantastic. But, I would also say that Microsoft hasn't communicated effectively to developers that [this] is the case. Will there be a "light" version of WinRT that can run on other OSes, such as Mac, Linux, Android, mobile and so forth? That was a major selling point to Silverlight -- although it wasn't supported on many mobile devices, it was supported on most desktops. If you built a Silverlight out-of-browser app and the requirement was support for Mac users, obviously we don't want to lose the ability to support them.
Ray Lawson
Tampa
I'm not sure I agree. For all their API similarity, Silverlight and WinRT are dramatically different platforms, for one simple reason: Silverlight is a browser plug-in. I can write a Silverlight app and have it run on the machines of maybe 70 percent of the folks that visit my Web site. Twelve months from now, when an app that targets WinRT will be able to run on maybe 1 percent of the world's Internet-connected devices, it'll still run on precisely 0 percent of the browsers that visit my Web site.
Ken Smith
Posted Online
Visual Studio Magazine wants to hear from you! Send us your thoughts about recent stories, technology updates or whatever's on your mind. E-mail us at [email protected] and be sure to include your first and last name, city and state. Please note that letters may be edited for form, fit and style. They express the views of the individual authors, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the VSM editors or 1105 Media Inc.
About the Author
This story was written or compiled based on feedback from the readers of Visual Studio Magazine.