Silverlight: Alive and Well!

Silverlight Just Logo Following PDC10 last week there has been much speculation in the press and online about Microsoft’s commitment to the Silverlight platform.

So let’s set the record straight: Silverlight is not dead, in fact Silverlight is more important and strategic to Microsoft than ever.

Silverlight conservatively has 60% installations on Internet-connected devices worldwide – a jump of 15 percentage points in the last year. Our management is committed to Silverlight  and we are currently working hard on the next release.

Silverlight will continue to be cross-browser and cross-platform, and run on Windows and Mac; it is a core application development platform for Windows, and it’s the development platform for Windows Phone 7.

Silverlight and HTML 5

We see a powerful synergy between Silverlight and HTML5,  and we’re committed to both technologies going forward.

The last few years have seen the emergence of a wide variety of Internet connected devices. We expect that HTML 5 will provide the broadest, cross-platform reach across all devices, and Microsoft will work to build the world’s best implementation of HTML 5 for devices running Windows.  At the PDC we showed the progress we are making on this with IE 9.  However, we see Silverlight continuing as a strategic development platform for mobile, Web and PC (for Mac and Windows). 

For business applications, Silverlight has seen broad acceptance across enterprises looking to deliver exceptional user experiences with the convenience of web deployment and the power of the .NET framework with Visual Studio. Business application development will be a major investment focus for us going forward.

In Media, Silverlight is the premium offering that builds on the capabilities of HTML5.  More than 100,000 developers around the world watched the PDC online last week using Silverlight, and gave the experience outstanding reviews.

About Jesse Liberty

Jesse Liberty has three decades of experience writing and delivering software projects and is the author of 2 dozen books and a couple dozen online courses. His latest book, Building APIs with .NET will be released early in 2025. Liberty is a Senior SW Engineer for CNH and he was a Senior Technical Evangelist for Microsoft, a Distinguished Software Engineer for AT&T, a VP for Information Services for Citibank and a Software Architect for PBS. He is a Microsoft MVP.
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