Recently there was a PDC Conference in which Bob Muglia (Senior Vice President of the Server and Tools Business at Microsoft) made some statements which seemed to cause a huge buzz of controversy over Silverlight which produced this article from Tech Crunch. In this article, the author (MG Siegler) gave a lot of his own personal opinion and selected key phrases from Bob making it seem as though Microsoft was shifting away from Silverlight being a cross browser/OS application development platform to a platform that centered around mostly Windows Phone 7 and a video player browser plugin. Given how much effort Microsoft has put into Silverlight this article seemed like it couldn’t be right. Not to mention the lack of context given for Bobs statements. I did a little research and contacted Tim Heuer (a program manager on the Silverlight Team) and he gave me this link. Bob clarified his statement “Our Silverlight strategy and focus going forward has shifted.” as not a negative thing and confirmed Microsofts dedication to the success and development of Silverlight as a multi browser/OS development platform. Tim Heuer also chimed in on his blog with this article in which he detailed more of his own personal investment into Silverlight. John Papa has also chimed in with this article also reaffirming Microsofts commitment to Silverlight. So for all the Silverlight developers scared that they are going to lose their platform, never fear. Microsoft is not killing Silverlight. Quite the opposite. They are committed to the long term success of Silverlight as a rich media/application platform.
But what about HTML5?
Bob went on to reiterate that “The purpose of Silverlight has never been to replace HTML, but rather to do the things that HTML (and other technologies) can’t, and to do so in a way that’s easy for developers to use”. So for all the fearful antagonists who are holding on to HTML5 for dear life, never fear. Microsoft is not trying to kill HTML5. Quite the opposite. There is a lot of evidence that Microsoft is trying to reverse previous position (aka IE6) of proprietary web standards to embracing HTML5 web standards (IE9) which is good for all of us. Silverlights purpose is to provide a rich user experience for web applications, media and of course phone apps. Silverlight was never intended to be used as blogging software or other similar types of websites. Of course one could do this with Silverlight but it would really be nothing more than a novelty as SEO is a key requirement for these types of websites. This is not to say, however, that HTML5 isn’t a good platform for a web application either. The key is to look at the business requirements for the application, look at the capabilities of HTML5 and Silverlight, weigh the pros and cons, understand your users and make an informed decision.