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For Techies Only: Microsoft Attempts to Dispel Rumors of Impending Doom for Silverlight
TMCNET ^ | 11/02/2010 | Susan J. Campbell

Posted on 11/02/2010 10:26:53 AM PDT by WebFocus

Rumors have been swirling throughout the industry that Microsoft may be finished with Silverlight. A recent PC World post challenges those rumors and features a reference to a blog post by Microsoft’s (News - Alert) servers and tools division chief, Bob Muglia, that describes the company’s future with Silverlight as bright and promising.

"Make no mistake; we'll continue to invest in Silverlight and enable developers to build great apps and experiences with it in the future," Muglia wrote in the post.

It seems Muglia was using the post to respond to reactions of an earlier interview he had done with Mary-Jo Foley of ZDNet. In the interview, he referred to Silverlight as a development platform primarily to use for Windows Phone (News - Alert) 7.

He was quick to downplay the company’s cross-platform capabilities and promoted HTML5 as the tool of choice for cross-platform developments, noting that Microsoft’s strategy had shifted.

Silverlight was originally developed by Microsoft as a platform for building Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) and could be used as an alternative to Adobe Flash and Flex. Silverlight could be used to build applications that would run – with a plug-in – across different browsers and offer capabilities HTML could not provide.

As powerful as this platform appeared to be, Foley and others were keeping Silverlight’s profile very low, while praising HTML5’s cross-platform capabilities. There are many who believe this downplay is an indication that Silverlight’s future is in jeopardy.

Contributing to the rumors was the fact that Microsoft has not yet announced a release date for the next version of Silverlight, version 5. A former Silverlight produce manager has been speculating in widely ready blog posts and Twitter updates that Silverlight is losing favor with Microsoft, due in part to the potential threat it presents to the Windows desktop dominance.

Muglia is trying to dispel the rumors that he is partly responsible for creating. He wrote: "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.”

IDC (News - Alert) analyst Al Hilwa believes Silverlight is very important for Microsoft as it could be the company’s best way to take the native client development for Windows into Web architecture. When the company released Silverlight, it did not anticipate that so many different mobile platforms would be available in such a short time.

Silverlight still has a strong presence in the market and presents a competitive differentiator for Microsoft, which is under increasing pressure to maintain its dominance in markets that are being challenged by new developments.

-- Susan J. Campbell is a contributing editor for TMCnet and has also written for eastbiz.com.


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Computers/Internet
KEYWORDS: microsoft; silverlight
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To: TexasRepublic
"Aha! You took the bait."

Well, I always did have a big mouth ...

"The last time I saw a mouth like that, it had a hook in it ..."


21 posted on 11/02/2010 12:23:30 PM PDT by BlueLancer (I'm getting a fine tootsy-frootsying right here...)
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To: TexasRepublic
I should have been a barber, or a lumberjack.

Sorry but unemployed Lumber Jacks are being trained as software developers in the Pacific North West...

22 posted on 11/02/2010 1:09:43 PM PDT by tubebender
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To: dangerdoc
Not sure, but I had to install it to use Netflix watch now.

I recently subscribed to Netflix. For whatever reason, I couldn't get Silverlight to work with Firefox on my Mac. Silverlight works fine with Safari though.

23 posted on 11/02/2010 3:10:50 PM PDT by csvset
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