Windows 7 64 Bit Can (and will) Microsoft keep Sil

As Microsoft produced plain at its Professional Developers Conference last week, there;s no finish in sight to the listing of new characteristics and features it strategies to add to Silverlight.Some developers who've been around the fence about regardless of whether they needs to be creating Windows applications using Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) or Silverlight applications see a light in the finish with the tunnel of confusion. Microsoft is including additional and more WPF functions to Silverlight (and vice versa). But as Tim Anderson,Microsoft Office 2010 Product Key, an IT journalist/blogger noted final week, there is a downside to this technique: By incorporating technologies like COM assistance to Silverlight, Microsoft is doing harm to its story that Silverlight is a cross-platform browser plug-in that supports Windows, Mac — and, thanks towards the Mono folks at Novell , Linux — equally.(The Register;s Gavin Clarke and I talk far more concerning the risks of producing Silverlight better on Windows than other platforms during our latest episode with the Microbite podcast.)The COM object support that Microsoft is promising for Silverlight 4,Windows 7 Pro, the version of Microsoft;s Web application framework/plug-in due to ship by mid-2010, is applicable to Silverlight running on Firefox or Internet Explorer on Windows only. Neither Mac OS X nor Linux assistance COM.Microsoft officials were quick to note that incorporating access to COM components was a customer request, not something Microsoft did in a vacuum. When I asked Microsoft about its strategies to keep Silverlight in sync across platforms, a spokesperson sent me the following statements:“In Silverlight 4 we addressed over 8,Windows 7 64 Bit,000 customer feature requests. One specific request was adding support for accessing COM components, enabling common enterprise scenarios such as automating Microsoft Office and providing developers easy access to hardware capabilities such as scanners and security card readers.”But check this out: Microsoft officials say they are evaluating how to add some kind of COM component access towards the Mac version of Silverlight. From the aforementioned spokesperson:“Unfortunately, the Mac offers no support for COM interfaces and we’re actively evaluating alternatives to get COM-like functions around the Mac.”There;s no further word on when or how Microsoft strategies to add this kind of assistance to Silverlight for the Mac.Meanwhile,Microsoft Office 2007 Enterprise, it looks like Novell;s Developer Platform Vice President Miguel de Icaza is itching to create assistance for the new Silverlight 4 functionality to future implementations of Moonlight, the Novell/Mono team-developed implementation of Silverlight for Linux. After the PDC, de Icaza blogged:“For the Moonlight team, this means that there's a whole lot of work ahead of us to bring every Silverlight 3 and 4 feature. I think I speak for the whole Mono team when I say that this is exciting, fascinating,Office 2007 Professional, challenging and feels like we just drank a huge energy boost drink.”Microsoft;s latest Silverlight moves mean that Silverlight is evolving to become a universal run-time for Microsoft;s Common Language Runtime (CLR), the heart of .Net, according to de Icaza. Creating a desktop suite of Silverlight apps isn;t just a pipe dream, de Icaza said; it;s a real, doable project.Some developers are already dreaming of the possibility of a Silverlight operating system. (For some reason, I think the Windows team might try to derail that effort before it could ever happen, but who knows?) Microsoft has additional immediate and pressing concerns, though: It wants to keep Silverlight in sync across platforms if the company programs to play up the “available everywhere” piece of its Silverlight message.