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Silverlight: Does the new path lead to the end of the road?


By Patrick Hynds


 Patrick Hynds
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July 31, 2012 —  (Page 7 of 7)
I confess to not knowing how long the process takes, but I think it is safe to say that this is a symptom of the fear rather than proof that the fear is well-founded. The counter-evidence to this last point is that component vendors, including ComponentOne, Infragistics and Telerik, are all investing time and energy into their Silverlight tool sets, including updates for Silverlight 5. Fustino told me that since the merger of GrapeCity with ComponentOne, they are now providing Silverlight versions of their ActiveReports, Spread and ActiveAnalysis products, which definitely show they are not sitting Silverlight 5 out.

Finally, as you dig into the code of some of the new features, there are indicators that Microsoft has left the door open to future versions. For example, there are values for the MediaCommand Event that are currently not supported, but according to a blog post by Microsoft’s Pete Brown, “Those commands are reserved for potential future support.”

Yet there remain just as many reasons to believe that Silverlight 5 is the last full version of Silverlight we will see released. In the final analysis, it probably does not matter, since Microsoft is not orphaning the XAML skills of Silverlight developers. While we have seen Microsoft orphan developer technologies in the past, there is a long tail of developers still using some of them and still benefiting from extended support. After all, we still hear of Visual Basic 6 being used for development though it had been “orphaned” many, many years ago.

The better question may be whether Silverlight is complete enough to be useful without future releases, and I think the answer is clearly “yes” for many media scenarios. As Fustino put it, “According to Microsoft, Silverlight will be supported for at least the next 10 years, so even if there are not any new major releases, it's not going anywhere and it is rock solid as is.”

The lack of a delineated road map by Microsoft for Silverlight could be an ominous sign for many who crave new capabilities, but it’s more likely that Microsoft just does not yet know what role Silverlight will need to play once Windows 8 has been finally released and realizes its full potential market (or fails to realize a sufficient market share). Silverlight could very well be part of plan B in the grand scheme of things for Microsoft, or perhaps it thinks the features delivered in this latest round polish off the major things missing from Silverlight.

Only time will tell, but I think it is a mistake to assume to know for sure where things will go when Microsoft itself likely only hopes to know where the path will lead in its quest to once again dominate the developer landscape.


Related Search Term(s): Microsoft, Silverlight, XAML

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