Microsoft have recently announced that they are de-investing in their Interactive Media Manager solution (the solution the brought you the Podcasting Kit for SharePoint, amongst others) after just announcing that rich media support would be a feature in their Office and SharePoint 2010 offerings.
One can only speculate that the move comes after the recent release of Silverlight 3, which provides a framework that supports “native H.264/Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) Audio, live and on-demand IIS7 Smooth Streaming, full HD (720p+) playback, and an extensible decoder pipeline”. You can read about the entire list of new features on the Silverlight 3 website or even try the new beta version of the Silverlight website.
Silverlight 3
The shift towards Silverlight for rich media support also marries with the announcement of the Silverlight Web Part within SharePoint 2010.
It all sounds great but will it help Microsoft grab the holy grail of Multimedia development frameworks by toppling the king of the mountain, Adobe Flash? I personally think that Silverlight will never really compete against Flash. Coming from a multimedia production background myself, I feel there are several limiting factors:
- Complexity of C# compared to Actionscript;
- People producing Silverlight applications are developers born out of a developer background, not out of a multimedia background (we have all seent the dismal attempts that developers have made designing web sites!); and lastly, perhaps most importantly
- Inability to install Expression Blend on Mac OS X (I don’t count Bootcamp or virtualization i.e. Paralells Desktop)
What are your views on the topic? Are you a Silverlight developer? Or perhaps a Flash developer? I’d be interested to know where you have come from and where you see your professional development being focused over the next few years.
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Extract taken from http://blogs.msdn.com/imm/:
“Microsoft Services is de-investing in the Interactive Media Manager (IMM) solution. There will be no further development of the solution, nor any official support of this Microsoft IP beyond a custom support agreement from the Microsoft Premier organization. The final IP is only accessible to the Microsoft Consulting Services (MCS) field; there will not be external access to the IP beyond an official, contracted MCS engagement. It is possible for MCS to subcontract to a partner. Microsoft will retain the rights to the IP, and neither customer nor partner can redistribute it. Please note the IMM solution is dependent on a 3rd party component, licensed separately from Intellidimension. Please contact your local MCS representative for more information…”
Tags: Applications, Expression Blend, Rich Media Support, SharePoint 2010, Silverlight 3
