Its 2012 and Microsoft is still using Silverlight

This morning I visited Microsoft’s website on my Mac to look at their redesign. I was greeted with a big grey box and a notice that read, “Could not load Silverlight Plug-In.”

What a crappy experience for anybody who is considering a Microsoft product or switching over to Windows.

Out of curiosity, I visited Apple’s website from Internet Explorer 8 on Windows and was greeted without any error messages or gray “Dead Plug-in” boxes.

The same held true for Ubuntu’s website.

Sadly, a manager at Microsoft probably had the short-sighted idea of increasing the number of Silverlight installs by requiring it for one of their most heavily trafficked web pages. Unfortunately for Microsoft, this will come at the expense of alienating users on other platforms who may be having thoughts about switching over or buying their products.