Microsoft woos developers under the Silverlight

Computerworld - As Microsoft Corp. releases its Silverlight 2.0 rich media browser plug-in tomorrow, it is claiming strong momentum for the free, would-be Adobe Flash-killer.

As a result, the software maker is turning to the next phase of its plan: Directly wooing developers and designers to the rich Internet platform.

Microsoft is funding a French open-source project to build tools that would enable programmers to use the popular open-source Eclipse framework to write Silverlight applications, said Brian Goldfarb, a director in Microsoft's developer platform division, in an interview last week. This should also let Eclipse programmers share their Silverlight applications with developers working in Microsoft's Visual Studio framework, Goldfarb said. The project is being hosted on SourceForge.

Microsoft is also releasing for free a set of programming templates called the Silverlight Control Pack under its Microsoft Permissive License, as well as the technical specification for Silverlight's Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML) vocabulary via Microsoft's Open Specification Promise. The latter, said Goldfarb, should make it easier for would-be Silverlight developers.

Microsoft is also letting users of the free Visual Web Developer 2008 Express Edition write Silverlight applications.

In addition, Goldfarb said the new Silverlight 2.0 player comes with a cut-down version of Microsoft's .Net runtime. That means that .Net developers -- Microsoft says there are 4 million of them -- can build Silverlight applications purely through .Net. Also, said Goldfarb, Microsoft is enabling Silverlight 2.0 applications to be written with languages such as JavaScript, Ruby and Python in addition to the languages Microsoft usually favors, Visual Basic and C# (C sharp).

All of the moves are part of Microsoft's razors-and-blades strategy: Give away the Silverlight player and lower-end programming tools to attract developers and designers so that they'll eventually pay for higher-end Microsoft tools such as Visual Studio or Expression Studio.

"Just call us Gillette," joked Goldfarb.

Microsoft is turning its attention to developers because the company feels it has made strong inroads against Adobe Systems Inc.'s Flash player in the year since Silverlight's release.

Adobe claims that more than 96% of PCs worldwide have the latest Flash Player 9 installed on them.

But propelled by high-profile content deals with partners such as NBCOlympics.com and Silverlight's superior video quality, the player has been downloaded "well more than 200 million" times, according to Microsoft. As such, Goldfarb said that one in four people worldwide today have access to a computer with Silverlight running on it.

NBC's webcasting of the Beijing Olympics with Silverlight failed to lead to an online advertising monetary bonanza, Goldfarb acknowledged, but it added 9 million new Silverlight users in the U.S. alone, he said.