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Comment by chrisballinger | Hacker News Reader

Does anyone other than Netflix use Silverlight?

I for one am thankful that Netflix uses Silverlight. For one thing, it doesn't seem plagued with 0-day exploits all the time, doesn't want to update itself every other day, and crashes a hell of a lot less on my Mac than Flash does.

I'd be ok if MSFT won this one.

Silverlight is what crashes for me on the PC, while watching Netflix. I never have trouble with Flash, on PC or Linux. Except that it steals the mouse and keyboard. I hate that.

WotC uses Silverlight for their online D&D 'Character Builder' -- it is effectively a core product along with the standard rule books. (PHB, DMB, MM)

Tis somewhat niche, but D&D is king of that particular niche.

Lots of banks use it for internal software. Also, isn't it what we are all supposed to be using to develop Windows Phone Apps?

Yeah.

I'd be interested to find out the penetration Silverlight has made into the enterprise market, it's actually a fairly popular category on Stackoverflow.

Most of the Enterprise Managers I know moved their desktop applications to Silverlight. It provides reliable local caching (a must), out of browser support and can run on a Mac. More importantly encryption is a snap.

WPF really is dead and it was killed by Silverlight

I'm not sure what's current, but in the past I remember hearing that the streaming Olympics, NCAA tournament, and (2008) presidential debates all used Silverlight.

NBC used it for the Olympics a couple years ago.

Here in Canada, CTV used it to build their site for the Vancouver 2010 Olympics. To call it a disaster is not an understatement. The most curious effect, for me, is how many people first discovered what Silverlight was from having to visit that site -- and how universal they all thought the site (and therefore Silverlight) sucked.

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