Mit dem Königreich Adobe könnte es bald vorbei sein. Microsoft hat mit Silverlight 3.0, welches via automatischen Update eingespielt wird, beste Karten die Dominanz des Flash Player zu zerbrechen - mit der Unterstützung für das von Macromedia entwickelte Format SWF bricht eine RIA-volution ein. Bereits jetzt werden erste Pre-Alpha-Versionen der Neuheit im internen Microsoft-Kern diskutiert, die auch das legändere Adobe-Format AFD unterstützen...



Microsoft announced this morning that the Silverlight 3 player (currently codenamed "Silverlight Gold") will support playing and rendering .SWF files natively.

This casts into serious doubt the future of the flash player, which currently enjoys widespread success due to it's near-ubiquitous distribution and a complete lack of outside rivals. This could mean some big trouble for Adobe if Microsoft includes Silverlight Gold in one of its automatic updates. Microsoft could quite easily flag the flash player as a security risk and instantly ban it's automatic use on millions of PC users' systems.

As an open format, Microsoft is able to support the SWF format without worrying too much about the legal implications, much in the same way that Adobe did before it owned Macromedia. It's still likely that Adobe will file some sort of suit if it's player is flagged as a security risk, probably citing some sort of unfair invasion of privacy through the automatic updates and illegal competition.

Other features slated for inclusion in Silverlight Gold are the ability to play XBox 360 games natively on the web and a small embed-able version of the Zune player that users can use to play and share their music through their blogs, mySpace, etc.