I just recently got a new Dell Laptop XPS and was re-installing some software and had the chance to go through the Silverlight and the Adobe Flash install experiences. In all honesty I was expecting the Flash install experience to go much smoother than the Silverlight install experience, simply because they have been doing flash for so long. So I was presently surprised that the install experience of Silverlight is actually much smoother that flash. In fact, I used Firefox to do the install so I thought surely, flash would install much smoother. That just didn’t happen.
Lets go through the install experience.
- I went to YouTube in search of The Dark Night reviews. A pop up tells me I am missing a plugin.
- Firefox says it found a plugin for me, the Adobe Flash Player.
- Firefox tells me there is no plugin available for Adobe Flash Player. Now I’m confused.
- I am redirected to a manual install on Adobe’s web site.
- Download starts for the flash player.
- Adobe Flash Player installer won’t let me install the player until I close my browser.
- Install occurs. I like the screen but the details button with folders and weird names like flashplayer.xpt can be scary to a lot of users.
- Flash installer doesn’t restart the browser it made me close, so I have to go launch it myself.
- I go back to the site and my video works!
That’s way too many steps. Most users should be able to get through it, but it seems really complicated for no apparent reason. New users would be completely confused.
The Silverlight Install Experience
- I go to Line Rider to check out the new Silverlight version, it warns me I don’t have Silverlight.
- I click the link to install it and a pop up comes up to “install now”.
- It installs and I press “close”.
- I refresh my web site, and the application works.
Anyway, I really like how Microsoft has built in a “Direct Install” Experience into their Silverlight installation experience. It really makes the installation experience of going to a site with Silverlight required a smooth and easy one.
If you want to create your own Silverlight Install experiences, you can download the Silverlight Installation Experience Guide and learn how you can optimize your site’s Silverlight install experience.
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That install guide is out of date now.
One other cool thing: it is often possible to avoid the manually refresh using the Microsoft supplied script in Silverlight.js (part of the SDK).