"Our strategy with Silverlight has shifted"

Good and bad yeh?  But great to see MS on top of the whole market thing with HTML5. (" For better or WORSE  HTML5 will prevail"). 

Personally I hope that MS future involves both Silverlight and HTML5 (and in a meaningful way, I want to have the option of developing great Silverlight apps for the ... Tablet platform!). 

@Ian2:I'm hoping that at some point we will see Silverlight and WPF converge to the point that the difference between Silverlight and WPF will be to add some more assembly references to get the extra features. That would make it a whole lot simpler to to go from one to the other.

Obviously such a feat would require a lot of refactoring of both platforms, but it might be better in the long term.

@Ian2: can you please say when and where and by whom this was said?

Bog Muglia at PDC

It certainly makes sense to slow down the development cycle a little bit. They've done a lot in very little time. Now they can afford to take more time to really nail down the platform.

I'm hoping the whole HTML5 bandwagon implodes in a really spectacular way sometime soon. It probably won't - it'll just proceed the way other web 'standard' technologies have and web developers will be left with something that we have to use "because it's standard" and yet has incompatabilities and workarounds required for every browser.

I mean the history of browser manufacturers getting together and making standards that work well in all browsers is pretty dismal and yet so many people seem to have all their hopes pinned on HTML5 being the future, not just of the web, but of application user-interface delivery in general. It's not a future I'm looking forward to at all.

Is that codeword for finally killing off Silverlight?

It just mean, WPF5 instead of silverligh, YESSSS.

@Andrew80:Sorry, here you go: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/microsoft-our-strategy-with-silverlight-has-shifted/7834?tag=mantle_skin;content

I appreciate the strategic shift in focus for Silverlight.  Focus on making Silverlight a great platform for Windows Phone development, and let HTML 5 shine for Web development.

@rhm: Agreed. HTML/Javascript is a terrible application platform and for some reason people consider HTML5 the magic standard that will somehow change everything. I can't wait for that bubble to pop.

Boom Baby ....!

No smoke without fire - don't forget that session note that was 'secret until after the keynote' 

Suspect something wasn't quite ripe for the PDC - but maybe a Silverlight announcement will come at TechEd in a couple of weeks?

3 hours ago, Bas wrote

@rhm: Agreed. HTML/Javascript is a terrible application platform and for some reason people consider HTML5 the magic standard that will somehow change everything. I can't wait for that bubble to pop.

Why is it a "terrible application platform"?

@Bass: Gain a couple of years' experience developing web applications and you'll find out.

I suspect it's a matter of - to mangle Douglas Adams - HTML's fundamental flaws being hidden by its superficial flaws. As long as IE and browser incompatibilities are around for developers to blame their woes on, they'll mask the deeper problems with the web stack.
(Not that WPF/Silverlight don't have their share of flaws as well ...)

10 hours ago, Bas wrote

@Bass: Gain a couple of years' experience developing web applications and you'll find out.

1 hour ago, Bass wrote

*snip*

Duly noted. Is it some kind of difficult question to answer though?

Soul destroying with the odd glimpse of pure brilliance has been my general experience!

Try to fit every problem into a document based metaphor leads to hack on top of compromise on top of hack.  Most of our web apps these days tend to end up as a single page download and everything is run via javascript on the client (think OWA).  At that point how is this any different in concept than something like Silverlight, I’m executing on the client making web service calls back to the server.  If you need maximum reach then you’ll have to jump through the hoops, but if you don’t, why not use tools that make your life more pleasant and more productive.

I welcome the rise of platform specific apps (iPhone, WP7, Android) overall I think it leads to a better user experience.

Just my opinion, yours may be different, and equally as valid.

24 minutes ago, PerfectPhase wrote

*snip*

Soul destroying with the odd glimpse of pure brilliance has been my general experience!

Try to fit every problem into a document based metaphor leads to hack on top of compromise on top of hack.  Most of our web apps these days tend to end up as a single page download and everything is run via javascript on the client (think OWA).  At that point how is this any different in concept than something like Silverlight, I’m executing on the client making web service calls back to the server.  If you need maximum reach then you’ll have to jump through the hoops, but if you don’t, why not use tools that make your life more pleasant and more productive.

I welcome the rise of platform specific apps (iPhone, WP7, Android) overall I think it leads to a better user experience.

Just my opinion, yours may be different, and equally as valid.

Fair enough. You should take a look at Google Web Toolkit though. It lets you write HTML/JS based web pages entirely in Java.

Now if we'd only get a GWT-alike for every language ... (including, but certainly not limited to, currently CLR-targeted ones)