Categories
Mozilla

Silverlight Update System?

Silverlight update dialog

So when I pointed Firefox to MSN tonight, this is what I saw. Is this really the best way of notifying users of an update? Could they have at least used a confirm() to allow the user to decide if they want to visit that url or not. Or perhaps use a <div/> to overlay the content of the page when it loads. Is a user supposed to type that url in by hand? Does the average user even know what to do when they see this dialog (other than hit “OK”)? Perhaps just say “visit silverlight.net and download the latest version”?

Just goes to show how awesome the Firefox automatic update system is.

Considering Microsoft has an update system on all Windows systems, you’d think at least for the Windows platform, they could rely on Windows Update.

Am I missing something? Is there really no better way than an alert()?

Remember everyone, that’s 0x4009e, those are ‘0’, not ‘O’.

No wonder people hate technology so much.

2 replies on “Silverlight Update System?”

I’m guessing you’re using beta/CTP code, and this isn’t a “production” message, since production versions don’t expire. So yeah, inelegant, but beta software isn’t polished, especially the parts that are beta-specific.

Silverlight RTM has an automatic update system – in fact, Silverlight 1.0 was updated in November to v1.0.21115:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M.....t#Versions

You probably didn’t even realize, because the default configuration is for Silverlight to update itself automatically.

In any case, Silverlight’s JS script inserts placeholder HTML into the webpage when the Silverlight control is not installed – at no point does it alert() anything. I think this is probably a usability problem with MSN, rather than Silverlight.

Aside: Be aware that FlashBlock has a bug which prevents Silverlight from showing. You currently need to use the FlashBlock unstable release.

Leave a Reply to Mike Kozlowski Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *