Microsoft Office 2008 installs Silverlight on the Mac

Anybody else notice that Office 2008 for the Mac installs Microsoft Silverlight?  I wonder what it does with it on the Mac?

Comments

[jhall]

It is like adobe flash.

[Rodfather]

Cool. The faster flash is gone, the better. Silverlight and Adobe Air is the way to go.

Try checking if any of these work?
http://silverlight.net/community/communitygallery.aspx

[A. Davis]

its just a browser plugin to view silverlight content... just like if you download it from the silverlight home page...

[Don Fresno]

Flash rules when it comes to online animation and multimedia content. It 95% browser penetration rate with has thousands of developers and is a feature full, robust, mature development environment. The last thing we need is another inferior Microsoft product muscling its way in and allowing Billy and his croanies to dictate (read control) online content.

[Rizzle]

A. Davis.... I guess you don't have anything to worry about since you won't be installing the inferior Office 2008? I'm sure open office isn't bundled with Silverlight.

The market dominance of flash is nice but silverlight is easier and more powerful when it comes to programming and making content. It's just a matter of time before this flash is the inferior one.

[Nick]

"Silverlight? I wonder what it does with it on the Mac?"

Well, jk ... remember (the now dead) Microsoft proprietary Java? Remember those "extensions" to HTML? Remember (the now thankfully moribund) ActiveX?

Yup, it's yet another attempt by Microsoft to lock up the Internet. It does stuff that should more properly be done with HTML/CSS/JavaScript -- and, importantly, SVG.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070501-microsofts-flash-killer-steals-the-show-at-mix07.html

Fortunately, no one wants Silverlight, and penetration is very low -- far lower than the Borg had hoped. You can almost hear them sweating in Redmond. Webmasters are turning their noses up at Silverlight (and quite right, too). And I doubt many end-users have installed it. Hence the stealth-install with Office.

I think MS have probably bitten off more than they can chew this time. Sit Silverlight out, and it will most likely go away.

[Colorado Bill]

Folks, we NEED Silverlight...
to keep Adobe honest.

[Jeff]

It's simply a URL that takes to the MS web site where you can download the latest Mac version and install. No big deal. It's NOT installed as part of the Office 2008 install.

[Ryan Beesley]

Silverlight really kicks some butt. Have you tried it, or are you just dismissing it because it is Microsoft? Known during development as WPF/E, Windows Presentation Foundation Everywhere, Silverlight lets you take XAML "canvases" and build apps with them. Using Expression, a designer can create a prototype of what the final app will look like, and then the developer can take that prototype and write the code behind it. Silverlight advances that idea by letting you do the same thing for Web applications. You can create the code using a .NET language, including some of the newer interpruted languages like Python. You potentially have all the rich UI and developing environment of the desktop applications in a web app. Furthermore, it is being designed cross platform and cross browser. Within a few weeks, there was a Linux team that already built a Silvelight compatible "plug-in" on Mono. It took Macromedia how long to make a version of Flash for Linux? They certainly didn't keep it version compatible with the Windows and Macintosh releases.
As a software tester for a website that uses Flash as one of it's primary controls, I wish Silverlight was around when we started creating our product and I with it had a high adoption rate. The ability to debug is as simple as hooking up the Visual Studio debugger. Funny Rizzle that you should mention ActiveX, how do you think Flash actually runs on IE? For that matter, how do you think it is any different for Firefox? Silverlight at least improves upon the model potentially by providing direct access to the DOM and from the browser, direct access to the app. With Flash, this can only be done with a horrific Javascript to Flash "library", or writing some sort of socket connection layer. You may also use the prohibitively expensive Cold Fusion server with the equally expensive version of Flash to provide some of those communication elements that don't come in the standard versions.
Air has potential to be a Flash replacement, but it is limited in part because you have to stick with the one language it comes with. It is also limiting from a designing perspective since it really only applies to web applications.
I'm sorry, but it's hard not to be excited about Silverlight when you know what it really is capable of and what it means to me as a software developer. Oh, and obviously the version that came with Office 2008 was the Macintosh version. :-D