“Unable to install Silverlight”

This image coming from Microsoft is simply unacceptable. This is the real reason why Silverlight will take quite some time before it has a large user base. My eye for comedy sees Steve Jobs pimp-slapping Silverlight designers, ranting on and on about how much this sucks.

A typical programmer would hide in the details, swaddling together excuses like:

• “You probably saw this error because you went to a site running Beta 2.” (This is actually true. But the sites were hosted my Microsoft and/or Microsoft employees.)
• “The Web is hard. It’s the Web’s fault.” (This is true—and you knew the job was tough when you took it.)
• “All you have to do is click on the error and fix the problem. Grow up.” (Learning the details of how Silverlight works is not an indicator of benign growth or maturity.)
• “You just hate Microsoft and are just looking for excuses to complain.” (This kind of diversion into exposing my “true” emotional state is just as graceful and elegant as the Silverlight error message. I don’t need to experience more bad design.)

What Microsoft should release is a Silverlight diagnostic “power tool” that determines in one sweeping move what the hell is installed on my machine related to Silverlight. In fact, this tool should actually be in place of the code that threw up this error message.

rasx()