[nmglug] city of santa fe videos using silverlight (ugh)

[Akkana Peck]

Mark Galassi writes:
> I don't think so: I think that Silverlight works fine on Macs.

Toastmasters rewrote a part of their site to use Silverlight a
couple of years ago. Linux aside, it turned out Silverlight didn't
work right (even when a plug-in was supposedly available) on some
MacOS versions (other versions were fine), iOS and Android mobile
devices, and even some older Windows PCs.

Initially, when people complained, Toastmasters gave the same
"pffft, it works everywhere, go away" response you're getting from
Santa Fe.  Apparently that's the line they were being fed by the
company they'd contracted to design the site.  After maybe 3 months
they grudgingly announced that they were working on a "mobile"
version of the site for iOS, an Android version would follow.
Eventually -- maybe nine months after the initial Silverlight
appearance -- they unveiled a DHTML version that worked everywhere.

I just tried the Santa Fe site on my Android 2.3 tablet. I'm not
sure what's supposed to happen, but every video category I clicked
on froze for a moment and then said "Sorry, you reached a page that
does not exist". If it can be shown to fail on Android and iOS, that
will matter a lot more to Santa Fe than Linux desktop users. If you
know anyone with older Macs, have them try it too -- Mac users who
can't upgrade tend to inspire more sympathy than us Linux geeks.

	...Akkana