Microsoft has been boasting about its Silverlight technology as something quite essential to the web world these days. At some points, Microsoft goes to the extent of saying that Silverlight is a lot more important than the new tag: HTML5.
Developers at Microsoft believe that Silverlight can further extend and polish the native features that HTML5 has to offer. Even though, HTML5 has taken the spotlight lately from Adobe Flash and Silverlight, Microsoft is still not willing to give up that easily.
One of the Microsoft’s Silverlight developers started a blog entry. In “The Future of Silverlight”, bloggers talk about the ebb and trough of this technology. At one point, it is written, “Our purpose was never to replace or takeover HTML5, we’re merely making our name by trying to make things easier for developers to tap into. Some scenarios are not covered by HTML; this is where we want Silverlight to take part actively.”
It is evident that Silverlight is still being used in business/enterprise sector for applications, premium media experiences, games, photo sharing and mainly many other web services. On paper, the media features of Silverlight are well off and beyond what HTML5 can offer.
Microsoft’s Paul Becker said, “We’re not talking here idly with our hands lopsided. The company has made a lot of investments based on or around HTML. We’ve had SharePoint, Internet Explorer, ASP.Net and not Silverlight. We believe that HTML 5 itself will become extinct the way HTML4.0 did.”
