Microsoft will deliver a beta of Silverlight 5, the next version of its rich Web application framework, at the MIX 2011 (MIX11) conference that runs April 12-14 in Las Vegas.
As indicated in a
recent eWEEK slide show, Microsoft has announced that it will deliver a beta of its
Silverlight 5 plug-in technology at the
MIX 2011 (MIX11) show in Las Vegas.
At MIX11, which will run April 12-14 in Las Vegas, Microsoft plans
not only to deliver a beta of Silverlight 5, the next version of the
Microsoft plug-in for delivering rich Web experiences, but also to
demonstrate the company's commitment to
HTML5, the rapidly emerging standard for Web development.
In an
April 4 post on Microsoft's Silverlight blog,
a statement issued jointly by three Microsoft Developer Division
honchos set out to explain the company's Web development strategy and
its positioning of Silverlight and HTML5. The post, entitled,
"Standards-based Web, plug-ins and Silverlight," notes that there is no
one true tool for all development purposes or scenarios.
Moreover, the April 4 post, signed by Walid Abu-Hadba, corporate
vice president of Developer Platform & Evangelism; Scott Guthrie,
corporate vice president of .NET Developer Platform; and S. Somasegar,
senior vice president of the Microsoft Developer Division, had three
key takeaways:
- For plug-in based experiences, we believe
Silverlight delivers the richest set of capabilities available to
developers today, making the choice of Microsoft technologies even more
compelling.
- For Windows Phone development, Silverlight and
XNA are the core fundamental building blocks for building rich
experiences that take full advantage of Windows Phone.
- HTML5 is a solution for many scenarios, and
developers should make the appropriate choice based on application
needs, knowing that we have a heritage and a future vision of
supporting a wide variety of technologies to meet those needs.
Microsoft's strategy around Silverlight and later HTML5 has
continually evolved since the introduction of Silverlight in 2007.
Initially positioned as a direct competitor to Adobe Systems' Flash
technology, Silverlight further evolved into an application framework
and tool for creating and delivering rich Web experiences and became a
key tool for developing Windows Phone applications.
Indeed, as the post indicates, two key shifts occurred in the
industry that have caused Microsoft to put a slightly different
emphasis on Silverlight:
"First, the world has changed from one in which people used a single
device (primarily a PC) to one in which they use several, and many of
the experiences on those devices are Web-enabled in some form or
fashion. Given that user experience is now a multi-device (i.e.,
cross-browser/cross-platform) experience, standards and reach play a
more important role than ever, both for users and developers. Second,
the evolution and maturity of Web standards have resulted in HTML5 that
will support many of those rich scenarios that previously required
plug-ins. The market momentum behind adoption of HTML5 as the path
forward for broad cross-platform reach continues to gather momentum,
and with Internet Explorer 9 Microsoft is chief among those leading
that charge."
During Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference (PDC) 2010 last October, Microsoft began to shed more light on the
direction the company was taking with Silverlight and HTML5, which
caused a ripple of concern
in the Microsoft developer community. This April 4 post expands on the
guidance former Microsoft Server & Tools President Bob Muglia gave
last year.
Al Hilwa, program director for application development software
research at IDC, said, "To some extent this is the kind of blog they
could have issued prior to last year's PDC when their repositioning
came out presumably inadvertently. When Silverlight first came out,
Microsoft positioned it as a direct competitor to Flash and presumably
many understood that to mean that Microsoft would put it on every
platform. As their blog explains correctly, platforms multiplied making
such support costly and complex, and some important ones have turned
out to be closed ecosystems making that impossible."
Moreover, as the Microsoft post emphasizes, developers will continue
to have to make choices as to which tool is best for which applications
or purposes.
"Neither plug-ins nor standards-based approaches, however, represent the
single
answer to client development," Microsoft's post said. "In general, we
know developers always want the best of everything, in a single tool,
but at the same time recognize that is not a practical way to approach
development. Developers need to make choices and tools will continue to
evolve." In particular, many development decisions will have to be
made, "close to the code," the post added.
Summing up his thoughts on the issue, IDC's Hilwa said:
"HTML5 has received broad support and faster-than-expected
implementation in mobile and now desktop browsers. Much of what might
have required plug-ins can be done with HTML5. There are, however,
high-end applications where plug-ins will continue to make sense. Also,
plug-ins will always be faster to exploit new capabilities in hardware
and to introduce new capabilities that take advantage of ever-improving
performance. If the standards lag with respect to what is possible with
technology, plug-ins will play a bigger role. What is more depending on
available tools and skills some runtimes will be more productive to
develop for than others. I think the blog is highlighting that new
investments in HTML5 tooling are coming from Microsoft and to explain
why Silverlight may not continue to be the star of the show it has been
the last couple of years."
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