Maybe that should have been the high level message that MS gave us - something along the lines of

"We recognised the importance of WPF and Silverlight and for the next version of Windows we are consolidating and moving these important technologies into the core Windows Runtime".

At the same time they could have bigged up HTML5 without 'annoying' anyone.

I actually prefer to think of what happened in these terms (rather than what MS are telling us)

I suspect the reason for not saying it in those terms is the enormous storm you'd have seen on the internet claiming that Microsoft were trying to kill off Flash by bundling Silverlight into Windows. From a political standpoint, a few slightly confused or irritated Silverlight developers is probably a lesser evil.

It would be interesting to have been a fly on the wall in that meeting - if that is how it played out.

8 hours ago,AndyC wrote

For the only use case where it really mattered (i.e. development on Windows) that's a reasonable approximation of what has been done. The web plugin, just like other plugins, is less relevant in a fast HTML5 driven web.

I suspect the reason for not saying it in those terms is the enormous storm you'd have seen on the internet claiming that Microsoft were trying to kill off Flash by bundling Silverlight into Windows. From a political standpoint, a few slightly confused or irritated Silverlight developers is probably a lesser evil.

Since Flash is just as unpopular as Silverlight these days, I don't think this is the case. They're keeping it quiet because they want to push Metro. 

8 hours ago,AndyC wrote

I suspect the reason for not saying it in those terms is the enormous storm you'd have seen on the internet claiming that Microsoft were trying to kill off Flash by bundling Silverlight into Windows. From a political standpoint, a few slightly confused or irritated Silverlight developers is probably a lesser evil.

AndyC, the only hole in your theory is the fact that Silverlight didn't turn out to be the threat is was thought to be. In 2007-2010 (until IE9), i was really scared that Silverlight is going to take over the web.

More generally, I think the association of Silverlight and Flash(for example saying Flash/Silverlight whenever talking about plugins) is something created in the marketing department at Microsoft and quickly adopted by Sliverlight developers. My feeling is that it has no base in real life where, i believe, Flash is one or more orders of magnitude more prevalent then Silverlight.

I hate both, and wish they weren't on the web, but to Flash' credit is the fact that it was created around 1996, while Silverlight was created in 2007! That is why Microsoft is irrelevant in this webby world, and NOT A THREAT TO ANYONE ANY MORE. The stock market seems to understand this.

[I'm talking only about the abomination that is Silverlight-for-the-web, not dotnet in general or Silverlight for your intranet]

 EDIT: Grammar