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Andrew Tokeley

Thoughts on the Software Development Industry

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Silverlight Install Experience – Keep it Simple

Don’t get me wrong – I love Silverlight. But this sort of user experience is shocking. Here’s a screenshot of the page a user - who may never have heard about Silverlight before and is probably a computer novice – has to get their head around. This does nothing to improve Silverlight adoption.

Compare this with the page to install page for Flash.

Enough said.

Friday, August 14, 2009 3:28 PM

Your Comments.

# re: Silverlight Install Experience – Keep it Simple
Ouch, that hurts. And after we shared a Bastard in Wellington? ;-) -- kidding aside. Some of us agree and wheels have started. Some wheels are slower than others in the big ship.

Hope all is well. Cheers!

Left by timheuer at 8/14/2009 5:30 PM
# re: Silverlight Install Experience – Keep it Simple
I'm sure you guys will get to this sort of thing soon. Just giving you some ammo to get the wheels turning faster.

Cheers Tim

Left by tokes at 8/14/2009 8:55 PM
# re: Silverlight Install Experience – Keep it Simple
Interesting.

This is actually the first time I see the "Silverlight installation page".

My understanding is that when a user that doesn't have Silverlight runtime installed encounters a Silverlight application, it prompts to install Silverlight with a simple "Install Microsoft Silverlight" link to the actual runtime file download. So users click on it the download starts and user clicks to confirm to install it. So, I'm not sure if most of the "novice" users will see this installation page.

Comparing to Adobe Flash, users have to actually physically go to the download page from which they can then download and install it. So one extra step.

But I do agree with you on that particular installation page.

Left by Sun at 8/16/2009 9:30 PM
# re: Silverlight Install Experience – Keep it Simple
FWIW, a while back I took some shots of my experience with Flash after you see the screen: http://timheuer.com/blog/archive/2007/12/04/flash-player-update-h-264-silverlight-install-experience.aspx

Left by timheuer at 8/18/2009 3:04 AM
# re: Silverlight Install Experience – Keep it Simple
Agreed - the install experience is way harder than it appears when you have to deal with different browsers and platforms but the problems with above install page have more to do with basic web usability rather than the process itself (which actually works pretty well).

Left by tokes at 8/18/2009 10:35 AM
# re: Silverlight Install Experience – Keep it Simple
Oh god.., I can't agree more with you Andrew. Thanks for giving this issue the visibility it deserves

jdpl

Left by David Parra at 9/1/2009 10:43 AM
# re: Silverlight Install Experience – Keep it Simple
Who ever designed the Silverlight Install page has absolutely no knowledge about designing for the user experience.

I wonder how many people look at that page each day and say WTF?

Whoever designed and approved that should be dismissed. I can't tell you how many times I've installed SL on several machines and wanted to click that top left text.

Left by Roy at 3/17/2010 5:49 AM

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