Microsoft Office 2010 Professional Can (and will)

As Microsoft made plain at its Professional Developers Conference final week, there;s no finish in sight towards the list of new characteristics and features it ideas to add to Silverlight.Some developers who've been on the fence about whether they needs to be developing Windows applications employing Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) or Silverlight applications see a light at the finish of the tunnel of confusion. Microsoft is including a lot more and more WPF functions to Silverlight (and vice versa). But as Tim Anderson,Microsoft Office 2010 Professional, an IT journalist/blogger mentioned final week, there is a downside to this technique: By incorporating technologies like COM support to Silverlight, Microsoft is performing damage to its story that Silverlight is actually a cross-platform browser plug-in that supports Windows, Mac — and, thanks to the Mono folks at Novell , Linux — equally.(The Register;s Gavin Clarke and I talk much more in regards to the risks of creating Silverlight better on Windows than other platforms during our latest episode of the Microbite podcast.)The COM object support that Microsoft is promising for Silverlight 4, 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 programs to keep Silverlight in sync across platforms, a spokesperson sent me the following statements:“In Silverlight 4 we addressed over 8,000 customer feature requests. One specific request was including assistance for accessing COM components,Office Professional, 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 assistance for COM interfaces and we’re actively evaluating choices to get COM-like features around the Mac.”There;s no further word on when or how Microsoft plans to add this kind of assistance to Silverlight for the Mac.Meanwhile,Windows 7 Home Premium Key, it looks like Novell;s Developer Platform Vice President Miguel de Icaza is itching to create support for the new Silverlight 4 features 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 is 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, 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),Windows 7 Home Basic Key, 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 with 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,Purchase Office 2007, but who knows?) Microsoft has extra immediate and pressing concerns, though: It needs to keep Silverlight in sync across platforms if the company programs to play up the “available everywhere” piece of its Silverlight message.