No one wants to install yet another unused technology (Silverlight) for an unknown new product.
As I said, I understand that this is going to be a limiting factor in some regards, but I couldn't have built what I did in any other technology (that's not to say that someone else couldn't have, just for my particular circumstances).
I'm hopeful that as Silverlight adoption increases this will become less of a problem, I'm also hopeful that colaab may act as a showcase for my Silverlight abilities and lead to further contract work, which in turn can help to fund product development.
Thanks for the feedback!
Also, the web isn't composed of windows machines. It's a mishmash of a billion different devices. The vast majority of which, know html, javascript, and not much else. Seems a bad idea to only write for a small subset of them.
I don't see where you (necessarily) get "small subset" from.
I do. The less "installed" software I have to go wrong, the better.
I suppose I can always go back to Lynx if these things really bother me too much.
Silverlight is actually pretty good; it's a much easier experience for developers than Flash/Flex. You might hate Microsoft, but you shouldn't hate the tech.
Adobe, while not perfect itself, has been committed to keeping Flash cross platform. This makes Flash harder to hate than Silverlight despite the high cost of developer tools
That will be most everyone. People will do just about anything you ask them to. The prevalence of phishing has proven that. They'll put their online banking creds into any site that has bankofamerica somewhere in the domain name. They'll buy Viagra from an anonymous email through a Costa Rican pharmacy. They'll most certainly click the button that says "Install Silverlight from Microsoft to watch the video".
But the other reasons are silly unless someone is paying you to increase Silverlight usage.
The difference between a biz and a hobby is that biz try hard to avoid doing things that don't help the bottom line.
A lesser evil is still an evil.
I consider the fact that Flash is pretty terrible a feature, as at least is helps discourage people from only using it in places where it's absolutely essential. I firmly believe RIAs are a fundamentally bad idea and the quicker they are replaced with open standards the better.
The reason being, earlier this month I bought an xbox360 (There is no choice, be stupid and spend a ton on a ps3 with its ridiculous bluray, or be stupid and spend less on an xbo360).... I bought the lips game, and went to lips.com to see what songs you can buy. It requires silverlight... for a list of songs. I installed it reluctantly, and in the most hideously badly rendered font you can imagine, it said "Song list coming soon".
The whole point of a collaboration type app, is that you can use it from anywhere - your laptop, desktop, iphone, nokia, netbook, internet cafe, library, wii, etc etc
Requiring a user install some software negates the whole point for me.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/08/joost-has-a-heartbeat/
I'm hopefull that over the coming months / years Microsoft manage to get Silverlight out there and available on as many platforms as possible, allowing me to write applications that can take advantage of that reach.
In the meantime the aim is to start building up enough user numbers to create a viable business, I've got very low overheads and no debt so hopefully that can come from the existing Silverlight install base + people who are willing to install it if they think the application will do a job for them.
Good luck with it :)