At Microsoft;s Expert Developers Conference (PDC) this week, the long term of Silverlight is one subject which has gotten brief shrift. There have been no periods about Silverlight five and only one point out of Silverlight in the kick-off keynote.But there had been a lot of mentions of HTML 5 and Microsoft;s commitment to that technology, not merely inside the next edition of its World wide web Explorer browser, but in addition because the glue “facilitating a level of independence and innovation between the back end and the front end” (as CEO Steve Ballmer said during an October 28 keynote address at the PDC).So what;s a developer to make of Microsoft;s messaging (or lack thereof) about Silverlight at its premiere developer conference?I asked Bob Muglia, the Microsoft President in charge of the company;s server and tools business, that very question and got what I consider to be the clearest answer yet about how Microsoft is evolving its Silverlight strategy.“Silverlight is our development platform for Windows Phone,” he said. Silverlight also has some “sweet spots” in media and line-of-business applications, he said.But when it comes to touting Silverlight as Microsoft;s vehicle for delivering a cross-platform runtime, “our strategy has shifted,
Microsoft Office 2010 Pro Plus Key,” Muglia told me.Silverlight will continue to be a cross-platform solution,
Microsoft Office Home And Student 2010 Key, working on a variety of operating system/browser platforms, going forward,
Office Pro Plus 2010 Product Key, he said. “But HTML is the only true cross platform solution for everything, including (Apple;s) iOS platform,” Muglia said.Muglia said there definitely will be another edition of Silverlight, and that it will be “very much in line,” in terms of functionality and features, as Silverlight 4, which Microsoft delivered in April of this year.Muglia didn;t share any kind of timetable as to when Silverlight 5 might make its debut. He did note that the delivery pace of Silverlight is slowing. “As with anything as it matures, the (delivery) cadence changes,” he said.When Microsoft first showed off Internet Explorer 9, its most HTML five compliant edition of IE to date,
Office 2010 Professional Serial, in March of this year, questions began to arise about the company;s dedication to Silverlight. Officials insisted that the two would coexist and that Silverlight would be Microsoft;s cross-platform development platform for mobile, Internet and PC platforms for a number of years to come, as HTML five was far from becoming an accepted standard.But within the past few months,
Office Standard 2010 Activation Key, Microsoft;s backing of HTML five has gotten more aggressive. Microsoft is pushing HTML five as the way developers can make their Net sites look more like apps. (”HTML5 enables you to make engaging and interactive sites. With full hardware acceleration of the browser, HTML5 pages feel and run like an app or a game,” said IE chief Dean Hachamovitch during the opening PDC keynote yesterday.)I;m guessing we;ll hear something about Silverlight five by the time of Microsoft;s Mix ‘11 conference inside the spring of 2011. Until then, where do you want it to see Silverlight go tomorrow?