Windows 8: The death of the silverlight framework? That was the question that I asked to LI users and it triggered a great deal of debate. And now we can say for sure that Silverlight is dead , my friends. Certainly it won’t happen right now, tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, as the customers won’t rush to use Windows 8 soon after its release, still there remain little time before Silverlight “passes away”. I am not happy about it, but I am also no longer in denial. In case Microsoft doesn’t change course Silverlight, as well as Flash and some other plug-in technologies, will be effectively unusable when Windows 8 is released.
On September 14th it was announced that the Metro-style browser in Windows 8 does not support plug-ins. The Metro-style browser is the full screen, chromeless implementation of Internet Explorer that most people are expected to use with Windows 8.
Dean Hachamovitch : “ For the web to move forward and for consumers to get the most out of touch-first browsing, the Metro style browser in Windows 8 is as HTML5-only as possible, and plug-in free. The experience that plug-ins provide today is not a good match with Metro style browsing and the modern HTML5 web.”
So it means no Flash, no QuickTime, no PDF readers, and no Silverlight.
Why is it so? “Metro-style browser can’t support plugins. Metro is not based on the Win32 libraries, it uses an entirely new OS-level API known as Windows Runtime or WinRT. Since the plug-ins are most likely built on Win32 components such as GDI they would have to be completely rewritten to run under Metro”.
And now let`s talk about the loses. The companies most invested in Silverlight are not loosing so much and appear to be in a rather good situation. Such companies have been adopting Silverlight, and Flex, for use in internal applications. “This sort of application generally have no HTML and simply use the browser as a delivery mechanism. As such these applications can be ported to the Metro runtime with surprisingly little effort. A new distribution mechanism will be needed, but something like the Windows app store for enterprises is undoubtedly in the works”.
The companies that will suffer most of all are those that use Flash or Silverlight to augment their websites. Since they cannot simply port their code to Metro they will need to go rewrite the components from scratch using HTML and JavaScript.
So what are your thoughts of this sad news? Is there any future now for Silverlight or Silverlight 5 will be the last major release?
Anna Kozik
Business Development Manager
I think Microsoft should give us a break. They came up with their browser IE and didn’t follow the standards and web developers today have to adjust their style sheets to work with older crappy versions of IE.
I am not against Microsoft but I would advise people to stay away from Microsoft browsers.
As far as Silverlight is concerned, people could still be able to download its applications as stand alone applications and run them directly on their compatible machines.
Silverlight will not die! It has it’s place for LOB enterprise apps
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it will not die because they will probably make a silverlight app runnable in metro winrt whatever anyway.
if not then what about the native pdf reader thing i read
and if metro ie need winrt than what about mac or linux or …?
if a html5 app you create only works in metro ie because of winrt or what then whats the point in writing html5 app?
really can anyone answer what html5 is? markup? javascript? it is nothing without a browser to support it and to render it correct
how do you think why html5 can stream video without installing a plugin, because it is not installed but embedded probaly (didnt read about it or forgot) its goin to search a codec needed to decode the video stream or what not.
sorry this post is only to release some steam ^^;
all above could be wrong i didnt research it further at this point
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The MS Silverlight team is now focused on the Windows phone, whose applications run on the SL Runtime. The future of Silverlight is tied to the phone now.