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MS dropping SIlverlight silly stuff in the news

pwd · 2010-11-22 18:41:02

When Microsoft introduced the HTML5 capabilities of IE9, they didn't talk much about Silverlight. More recently they said that HTML 5 is the "future of the Web." They also said that they were repositioning Silverlight. This has triggered a lot of people to jump to the conclusion that they are sropping Silverlight, or that…

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22-11-2010 7:41pm

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pwd

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When Microsoft introduced the HTML5 capabilities of IE9, they didn't talk much about Silverlight. More recently they said that HTML 5 is the "future of the Web." They also said that they were repositioning Silverlight. This has triggered a lot of people to jump to the conclusion that they are sropping Silverlight, or that it will only persist for Windows Phone 7 applications.

This seems pretty silly to me. I dont see any reason for them to talk about Silverlight in the context of IE9. HTML5 capability will be an intrinsic part of that, so it certainly would be a major topic to be discussed, when talking about it. Silverlight is a plugin on the other hand - it's not anything to do with new features of IE9. Not discussing Silverlight in that context doesn't indicate anything about it being dropped - it's just not relevant to what was being presented.

Backing HTML5 doesn't equate to dropping Silverlight as far as I can see. HTML5 will be the standard for some things people previously would have used Flash or Silverlight for; but even that will be gradual. I think Silverlight will continue to grow in the area of more programmatically complex RIAs, and I think Flash will remain the first choice for very pretty RIAs. I could also see Silverlight becoming more tied in with other MS technologies.

In any case, they have announced new Silverlight-based projects, and also are developing Silverlight 5. They are going to announce their official repositioning of Silverlight on 2 December:

http://www.silverlight.net/news/events/firestarter/

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