SilverlightShow: Silverlight and HTML5 - reflections after recent news from PDC Comments

RE: Silverlight and HTML5 - reflections after recent news from PDC

( Thanigainathan) — Sat, 06 Nov 2010 19:59:37 +0200

Hi All,

If HTML5 becomes complete then waht happens ?

Companies will start building the tools to build HTML 5 based applications. For example if MS would make a tool then they will do it and definitelt they will build a system which has the C# or VB.Net or any other lang which will generate the intense Javascript to do the task of animation or business application.

Well the problem will be cross browser. Instead of adopting to this its better to adopt to install the silverlight plugin. We can tell this to the clients if they are feared about the MS decision on Silverlight.

Thanks,

Thani

RE: Silverlight and HTML5 - reflections after recent news from PDC

( David Roh) — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 19:24:08 +0200

What I find extremely frustrating is the deafening silence coming from Microsoft management after all of the negative developer responses - I have 3 plus years invested in Silverlight which I do believe is the very best way to build business app and web sites (if Microsoft would just fix a few issues like text handling and SEO).

RE: Silverlight and HTML5 - reflections after recent news from PDC

( Doctor G.) — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 17:41:50 +0200

IMHO I think the issue is this: Imagine your are Telerik or Infragistics, and you have just hear that an MS VP state that Silverlight is still alive, but it is the no longer choice for the WIDEST deployment of RIA apps. That means the huge investment (marketing, engineering, sales, etc.) we just put into our companies Silverlight Controls is now for a niche market that is Microsoft only (don’t tell me that Silverlight on Apple or Moonlight are real choices).

Even those of us who are individual developers were counting on the widest market for our work. Right now, that ground is being ceded to Adobe Air [Android, Mac, PC, etc.) (and I used to be a Adobe MVP in Flash and I decided to invest in Silverlight skills).

I think this is the pain. I can no longer say that my products are really going to be write once, run anywhere. That space for Microsoft tools is the currently vaporware HTML5.

Does that clarify why this is such an outcry about the decision?

Postscript: HTML5 will never have the deep handles into the device and platform than Air or Silerlight OOBs have. This is key in the huge mobile market. We need better unified interaction with devices, sensors, etc. You, Sirs, are loosing sight of a key market discriminator provided by SL -> its ability to provide a level of EXTREME RIA (not just industry standard HTML5 RIA) across platforms. That is a tremendous market (and Ray Ozzie told you this when he left!, and I know Ray since college, listen to him).

RE: Silverlight and HTML5 - reflections after recent news from PDC

( Franck Jeannin) — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 16:27:47 +0200

Turning Silverlight into a platform to build application actually makes a lot of sense.

.NET has become too big and complex to grasp for newcomers (it was easy to learn incrementally over the last 10 year but I would not want to have to start from scratch today).

Luckily, Silverlight is a very compact, cohesive and consistent subset of .NET (80% of the features for 10% of the size) that someone can learn from scratch (once you are comfortable with it, nothing prevents you from upgrading your skills to the full .NET).

When HTML5 is finalized and widely adopted (several years from now), it will still lack some of the features that Silverlight has today (fine-grained multithreading, ability to process binary content efficiently, etc.).

For instance, it would be impossible to build Ormetis in HTML5 (see what is possible in Silverlight bearing in mind that there is no server involved here, the code is 100% client code http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8oj7kQyQhs ).

Furthermore, JavaScript remain with HTML5 the Achilles’ heel of the Web compared to .NET languages like C# or VB (see www.exgeekblog.com).

Finally, .NET is the only platform that let you use the same tools, skills and languages to build code for devices, PCs and the Cloud.

RE: Silverlight and HTML5 - reflections after recent news from PDC

( SL developer) — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 15:32:36 +0200

All the stated above is correct, but missing the point.

All Silverlight developers knows how awesome is Silverlight, the problem is that these developers need to convince there manages/clients that MS is not 'shifting' from Silverlight. MS should give a strong and load message about the next years roadmap (and I don't mean the pail statements in the SL team blog).

MS just shot itself in the foot, developers are forced to stop investing in Silverlight, these are the same people that are supposed to develop apps for the Window Phone 7 !