Is Silverlight the future or the past?

The Silverlight community has been startled since the day Microsoft announced that HTML5 will be an important technology in the desktop environment for Windows 8.  Some of the initial reactions were:

• we've just been F****D.
• It's time to flee away from MS, they are just insane.  Looks like Vista "success" was not enough for them

Let’s evaluate.

JavaScript

Some people claim that it is impossible to run the extensive business apps that we have today with HTML5 and JavaScript.  The code would simply be to complex, and the JavaScript technology is too limited.

But is it? There are numerous examples of online JavaScript applications that will blow your mind.  Here are some examples of very complex JavaScript applications:

• An online office tool written in JavaScript
• Kinnectlibrary trough JavaScript
• We have Linux running in the browser

So if we can build all the above using JavaScript then why wouldn’t we be able to build a ‘simple’ business application using JavaScript?  I welcome HTML and JavaScript to the Windows desktop experience and it is a smart move by Microsoft.

The HTML and JavaScript will probably be combined with the existing .NET technology anyways so why should the average .NET developer worry?  The front end changes but does that mean you will have to throw away all of your code?

Will Microsoft drop WPF and Silverlight?

I find it humorous how many people have asked this question.  The answer is simple: NO.  

They won’t drop WPF and Silverlight… not within the next 5 to 10 years they won’t.   If Microsoft would drop these technologies and stop their support then they would simply be kicking their self’s in the groin (and I have no idea how you would be able to kick yourself in the groin).  

The number of existing Silverlight and WPF are staggering, even though many people think otherwise.  At the moment, statistics show that Silverlight 4 is installed on 71% of all browsers.  Fair enough compared to the 96% of Flash it seems a bit low, but keep in mind that Flash has been around for more than three times as long as Silverlight and has some big players behind them.

Truly cross platform

I once read this article where the author claimed that .NET could possible just be a mistake.  Though I do not agree with all he said, he did have some very valid points.  As the writer in this article mentioned one off the initial selling points of the .NET framework was that it was platform agnostic.  After almost 10 years we can come to the conclusion that this is not truly the case.  It has the potential, but it never reached that point.

So what about Silverlight?  Is Silverlight platform agnostic?  Initially this seems to be the case.  90% of the time you write a Silverlight application, you’ll be able to run it on Windows and Mac.  Linux however is another story.  If you want your Silverlight application to run on Linux with Moonlight then be sure to downgrade a version and even then chances are you’ll bump into problems.

The problem is that a 90% success rate at best for a platform agnostic web application is not enough.  The times you’ll want your application to be platform independent are the times you’ll be making your application available to a wide range of users.  If you, as a company, will be making your application to be publically available then you want to be assured that nothing will go wrong.  It’s your company’s reputation on the line.

At this moment the only true platform agnostic technology is JavaScript and HTML.  It’s proven, sound and has had a long past behind it.  

Silverlight will survive

It seems like the HTML5 news is the only news that the Silverlight community pays attention to. Silverlight is more than just a browser plugin.  It has become the main application platform for Windows Phone 7 and it will likely be the application platform for XBOX .  

If you see it like that then you come to realize that Microsoft might have a bigger future in plan for Silverlight than most developers think.  It might become the unification platform for XBOX, Windows and Windows Phone. 

On the other side: "The future has a way of arriving unannounced." -George Will

We’ll just have to wait and see :-)