My Silverlight app successfully plays a repeating alert sound every ten seconds on a number of my own computers. One of my clients hears no sounds. I was just on the phone with him and verified that he could hear basic Windows sounds, sounds from another application, and sounds from another web page (not Silverlight, however) within IE.
Does anyone know of any settings which might affect Silverlight's ability to play sounds on a system which otherwise sounds (ha, ha) fine?
Thanks,
Ben
Maybe he has a problem with his DirectX (or more specifically DirectSound) installation.
Related
Since there are no answers yet, I'm going to rewrite this question in hopes of an answer (I don't mind discussion, but I know SO is about Q&A). It appears security checks/prompts make it unfeasible to use Flash Player. With this in mind, the question still stands, but please answer based on experience using AIR.
I have a Winforms app written in C# that I need to add VOIP to. I really like how well the Flash Player VOIP solution works, the AEC (echo cancel) is awesome. I know they use Speex, but the implementation is still a lot of work even using Speex, so I'd like to use Adobe's solution directly in my app.
Has anyone done this? What issues will I have? A few I can think of:
IPC between AIR and Winforms app. I assume this is easy and several options, including sockets/network, file i/o, maybe others.
Based on this
Content running in the AIR application sandbox does not need the
permission of the user to access the microphone
I don't think security warnings will be an issue? I'm not sure what a sandbox is yet, but as long as my AIR app can run in this and still talk with my winforms app, then shouldn't be an issue.
I assume the voice capture including enhancements (AEC, NS, Speex, etc) are supported in AIR?
Are there any samples I can run that use voice capture in AIR?
I was talking to another developer recently and we started to discuss Window Phone 7 development. Their thoughts, from what they had heard (i.e no hands on knowledge) was it was really just Silverlight development. My reaction was that I see a lot of posts these days regarding Silverlight that call out being for "Windows Phone 7" so there must be some distinctions between the two.
So what I'm wondering is what are the differences between developing for WP7 v. the browser plugin.
The things I can think of, but seem obvious are:
WP7 Silverlight version isn't the same SL 4.0 but more like SL 3.5+
the hardware is different (memory\cpu)
I assume there are some different controls
you need to take into account the form factor
Not discounting the above list, which are important, but what else is different when developing a Silverlight application for WP7 v. browser plugin?
Thanks
There are a lot of technical differences and sure there are plenty here who give you bullet list of these. However there are really just a few real differences that make a big difference to how you develop apps for WP7.
Its a touch interface people
Quite a few apps I've played with from the market place seem to have developers struggling to grasp the concept of a touch based interface. Its clear that many are still using the left mouse down event when they ought to be looking for a "Tap" gesture. This can be frustrating for users trying to "flick" and find they've "clicked" instead.
So make sure you are using a gesture based framework (toolkit has one) so you don't annoy the users.
Your app will tombstone
WP7 guards its resources jealously. At a moments notice your app may be deactivate as the search screen or start screen is invoked. Volatile state of your app will be lost. WP7 API includes a number of ways of keeping key small chunks of data when your app gets "tombstoned" so that when the user returns to it, it should be able to restore near enough the same state it had before. However this isn't done auto-magically you have to code for it.
Again some of the apps in the market place don't handle this well and when you have an Omnia 7 which has a seriously sensitive search button that can be really frustrating.
Network access and other services are intermittent
If you are developing a connected app you need to cope gracefully with changing network access or loss of access all together.
Read the manual
Whilst there are plenty of resources get devs up and running real quick the devil is always in the detail. I recommend you at least start with reading Fundamental Concepts for Windows Phone which will cover some of these issues.
TBH there are a lot. Some of them:
Touch input vs Mouse clicks
Sounds and music
Silverlight 4.0 "/content/song.wma"
Silverlight for Windows Phone 7 "content/song.wav" (mind the slash)
Navigation philosophy
WP7 SL has two threads by default. One (compositor thread) runs all animation, second (UI Thread) runs the rest.
Controls have very diffrent default behavior and look
and many other OS realated
Better than any explanation, you should refer to the official website.
Silverlight for WP has support for (according to the same doc):
Hardware acceleration for video and graphics
Accelerometer for motion sensing
Multi-touch
Camera and microphone
Location awareness
Push notifications
Native phone functionality
It doesn't have regular COM bindings and it has somewhat limited access to reflection, among all restrictions.
For a complete list of features supported in Silverlight for Windows Phone, read this document.
I have read a range of articles on advantages/disadvantages of Microsoft Silverlight framework in comparisson to Flash.
Fact that there were two version of Silverlight in the past 18 months worries me, as well as the fact that over 97% of web browsers already have Flash pre-installed.
I'm a .NET developer and I'm very happy with what I can do in the framework. At the moment I feel like I have to put my own preference to a side and decide whether I need to integrage flash with .NET instead of using Silverlight with WPF.
Did anybody try integrating Flash with .NET? What challanges did you come across? How easy was it in comparisson to working in Silverlight?
I have also read about recent talks between Microsoft and Adobe. Whatever way I go It feels very unstable. Can HTML 5 really compete with what's offered by Flash and Silverlight?
Thank you
I have integrated both Flash and Silverlight into my ASP.Net applications. I have to say that working with Silverlight was by far the easier way to go. Communication with the server is easier, initial setup was easier (along with a ASP.Net application or a simple HTML page). Integration into the ASP.Net application was the easiest part (as I'm sure you imagined it would be). If you're a .Net developer, then this is the way to go.
Also, I wouldn't worry about either of these technologies going away anytime soon. HTML5 is not going to take over. It'll take some of the market share, not all.
EDIT
Here are some links to other SO posts on the subject:
Which is the future of web development: HTML5 or Silverlight(or other RIA framework)?
Should I Abandon Adobe Flash for HTML5 and ?
Can HTML5 do most of what Flash does today?
This is basically the way I pick web technologies:
do you need to support every available platform made now, in the past and in the future? HTML4 (yes, 4!)
Do you have to make stuff that is not possible with HTML4, and are ready to sacrifice some user base? HTML5
Can you limit yourself to desktop users (no mobile devices) and need a very interactive application (more so than a "website")? Flash or Silverlight
Do you need to integrate with .NET? Silverlight
Are you familiar with .NET (more so than Flash)? Silverlight
Do you want to reach the absolute maximum number of users? Flash
Do you know Flash/ActionScript (more so than .NET)? Flash
Do you need even more features than what Silverlight provides, and can you limit your deployment to intranets? WPF/XBAP
The whole debate around Silverlight being dead is completely flawed in my opinion: those that thought Silverlight would be completely multiplatform really were not connected with the reality: just by looking at Flash it was clear from the beginning that iOS & co. would never support Silverlight.
HTML5 will probably be the real "universal multiplatform" environment (what is HTML4 now), but with all the nightmares we all know of html. If you are targeting desktops and need more interactivity, better tooling, unit testing & co. then Flash and Silverlight will still be the first choice.
Silverlight's user base is quickly coming close to Flash, so between those two it really comes down to the one you know better and the ease of integration with an existing backend.
The fact that Silverlight got a new major version every 9 months until now is just a sign of how much they are pushing it. Now that it's reached a mature stage you can expect to see larger intervals.
Frankly, AS3 is not hard to learn if you already know OOP. It will take a week or so. If you don't like all the frames stuff in Flash, you can create a single frame app and then manage everything from your custom AS classes.
I'm also a .NET developer, and I had no trouble learning AS3.0. Of course, one week is not enough to become an expert (it takes years to become an expert in any field). But if you simply need to create video or mp3 players, create drag and drop basic games/apps to add to an ASP.NET page, it's worth spending 20 or 30 hours on AS3. There are great video trainings out there . Seven or 8 hours training should take the 20 to 30 hours I mentioned. I went for AS3.0 a few years ago, rather than SL, simply because everybody has Flash plugin installed.
AS3.0 is typed (simple types like Number, String etc), but at least it's typed. There are plenty of functions, classes and methods allowing to implement hit tests, drag/drop, event listening (mouse events, keyboard events etc). Really cool and fun language.
Take care.
HTML5 has SVG and Canvas and video.
It's perfectly possible that at one point someone creative is going to create a very nice animation package that generates SVG files. There already are SVG generators there of course, but obviously they're not good enough because SVG and Flash is, so far, never mentioned in the same sentence.
But is ought to be possible. SVG does structured vector graphics, embedded scripting. The things you see done in Flash has to all be possible in SVG. Flash also has this awful notion of frames, which was a major design flaw from day one.
They should have just let you determine that you want to move an object from point A to B along a path determined by a line or curve or freehand path, and that the times of A and B can be anything and not just confined to a particular frame.
Then at playback, the faster your computer is, the better the frame rate ends up being. Slower computer, slower frame rate. As long as the object moves from A to B.
Then there are the bugs and just overall clumsy handling of Flash.
Flash can be done so much better.
So, I think that someone will at one point soon make an amazing SVG animation package that will just crush Flash.
I'm against Silverlight because it's Microsoft. Microsoft means proprietary. They do whatever they want to do. You've already mentioned different version numbers. This means your customers have to have the right version downloaded. You can count on your customers having to download major upgrades, and before you know it their entire .net install needs updating, before you can show your animations and applications.
Silverlight also doesn't work on Linux. It's supposed to, through Novell's efforts with Mono, etc, but in practice, in the field, it just does not work where you need it to.
I don't know if and how well, in practice, Silverlight works on the Mac, but I don't trust it.
Eventually, I think, that future HTML5/SVG (Canvas maybe?) is the way to go. It'll even do 3D using OpenGL accelerated graphics... (but I don't know if that's portable enough).
In the meantime, Flash is your safe bet, and it's almost guaranteed to run anywhere.
I wonder if anyone has created an animation package that outputs to swf files that's better than the Flash IDE. Shouldn't be too hard, given Flash IDE's clumsiness.
Microsoft recently announced a "change of direction" with Silverlight with more emphasis on mobile rather than desktop.
Flex/Flash and SilverL. now are very similar... using webservice for the clientt/server comunication you can work well with both.
Sure, for .NET developer with Visual Studio to use SilverL. is much more FAST and you need C# only.
But, Flash is more available on PCs, also for mobile devices... you could think for Flash if you need portability.
My concern is that novice users will turn their back to a website which asks them to install Silverlight.
One of the reasons I think they might be scared of installing Silverlight is because they are not aware of what Silverlight actually is.
What's your take on this?
You can see the website riastats.com for information on install base, the main thing is if Silverlight gives an advantage such as the NBC Olympics coverage in United States uses Silverlight because of the Smooth Streaming technology plus the ablity to have a Live DVR where live streams can be "rewound" - all these features are probably better supported by Silverlight has the Client and Server ends can be well integrated (with Microsoft solutions).
I may be a little biased as I am a Silverlight developer, but with a less than 5MB download for runtime, that helps sell it more - especially as it may be a better alternative than the Flex download for Flash if this is required to create a solution that would have worked in Silverlight as it is a larger download.
Check out the silverlight.net showcase you'll see who and where it is being used - you can then make your decision based on this - rather than a few opinions (including mine!).
Well Silverlight is installed on about 50% of pc's now. So it depends on your market. Normal web users (ie. non-developers) tend to install anything you prompt them to if you can clearly and succinctly give them a compelling reason to run your application.
It doesn't tend to matter outside of the work place environments if you use silverlight or flash. What's more important is that your application will solve a problem the user has, and you can communicate that well.
They do not know what is is, marketshare is around 40%. I'd say it's not ready if you want to reach everyone.
However if Flash or javascript is not an option, give a firsttime visitor window informing your clients about silverlight.
I think you're going to have a lot of users on the public internet that don't have it installed. If you're really going for a mass-market site, and you aren't doing a crazy amount of media-rich type content, I would go with something like JQuery to make your Javascript easy and cross-platform.
Since the launch of Silverlight 2 I was expecting a lot of full blown Silverlight applications popping up but still there seem to be little evidence of this. Does anybody know of such applications out there in the wild. And also what would be the obvious applications you would develop in Silverlight. I would say mail clients are bad examples as they just as well could be written as a web/ajax app. As Silverlight is far more powerful than web+ajax possible candidates should be impossible/akward implementing as a web/ajax app.
The ones that comes to my mind is
Photo and imaging editing apps
Reporting applications
Office applications, Word/Excel...
Edit:
Added from posts
Games
The point isn't that the app need to fill the whole screen just that it isn't just a small part of a webpage, or you could call it a full blown application running inside the webbrowser, only using the webbrowser as a host.
I think the Medical app that Microsoft itself developed shows pretty well what could be achieved with silverlight http://www.mscui.net/PatientJourneyDemonstrator/
As for image editing then as I understand its a bit difficult as Silverlight lacks a Bitmap API to be able to do per pixel image editing...
Edit:
I noticed you added Word/Excel to your question and there comes the problem that Silverlight doesn't have a rich text editor built in and there hasn't been real good examples of custom implementations. There is one http://www.codeplex.com/richtextedit but I haven't seen any applications that actually use it.
I'm working on one in the medical domain.
This started as an update of a Mac classic application but due to the amount of work involved, broadened to considering other toolkits. I convinced them to go for an initial WPF desktop port to be followed by a Silverlight version.
I don't know one so far, but I could imagine that it could be used in a kind like the fullscreen video playback on youtube.
How many fullscreen desktop apps are there? Most application don't need the entire screen. If you don't want to be distracted by menus and taskbars and so you go fullscreen. Another type of applications that can use fullscreen are games.
You are limited in fullscreen to certain key presses such as arrow keys, tab, enter, and space so this rules out some of those types of apps. They have done this for security reasons so an app can't hijack the screen and record the keypresses, but I wish they could come up with a scheme to sufficiently warn the user then allow it if they consent.
An application Microsoft seem to like to show case is the AOL mail client written entirely in silverlight.
Personally I follow the rule is if you would not write it in flash you would not write it in silverlight preferring AJAX in most cases. In the past most large flash application have failed such as the flash word processor (cant remember the name) while AJAX enabled applications such as google documents have taken off.
Finally I believe until moonlight (linux and mac support) has been released and more general users have silverlight downloaded developers will be reluctant to use it widely even for smaller apps and gadgets.