Silverlight Killed or? I don’t think so…
Unfortunately, in some sense http://mashable.com/2010/10/29/microsoft-silverlgiht-html made correct statement: “Microsoft Shifts From Silverlight to HTML5″ and that’s a FACT now!
Why this happens!?? Here is my thoughts:
- Silverlight, like many other interesting concepts from MSFT was implemented with many technology related issues in early versions!
Performance and fonts issues I can name as most important! I do NOT like how Silverlight apps looks at my TFT monitors (because of fonts issues), same like WPF applications! Sometimes, when I scroll something, it push me think that I should go to doctor to check my eyes again! (and same issues with fonts I see with IE9 beta, not sure MSFT will fix it someway or not before final release)
- Silverlight supported on much less devices than HTML / CSS / JS / Flash and it seems like because it’s proprietary this can’t be changed in near future!
- Development of Silverlight can be done right only using Microsoft tools like Visual Studio and Microsoft Expression Studio (some apps from it) that cost $$$
- If you know Java, Python Django, RoR, PHP, Grails or any other language / platform / framework for web development, it’s much more easy to use HTML5 because you already know HTML / CSS / JS stack (as well as many web frameworks) than to move to something new like XAML / C# etc! I.e. basically only developers in .NET can consider using Silverlight, not other wide audience of Web developers! And while I can’t sure thing compare power of Silverlight and HTML5, MOST of required things can be done easy with nice JavaScript frameworks (think jQuery), HTML5, CSS3 etc.
- Silverlight apps are always have big size! Sometimes there are even so heavy that web users probably will not wait so much time! Compare it to current compressed Javascript code and HTML5 compressed using standard gzip compression and / or different other compressors! What to feel it? Go to http://www.microsoft.com/windowsphone/en-us/buy/7/phones.aspx and check how long it takes to really get it in your browser!
I can give many other arguments around it, but generally when Silverlight out I made my choice – AVOID using it (as well as WPF, but that’s other story) for any live projects, until I will really feel the need of “all in one” web client application with really rich and heavy graphics / Video / Voice requirements!
It’s real fact that MOST of flash based sites, where site COMPLETELY was made in Flash FAIL, unless they touch some very specific area! I.e. it so easy to see that web users want “light” pages (HTML / CSS / Javascript) and not heavy as Flash / Silverlight get produced!
But again: I DO see big future anyway for Silverlight as really best framework to build RIAs out there in .NET space! More so, now it seems like Silverlight can take it place in WP7 development!
Just always you should ask yourself – are you sure you want to build (or customers ask you to build) RIA? Maybe you want to build super light, not heavy Web 2.0 (3.0) web site? Or may be you want to build something using only open / cross-platform technologies?
Than don’t even think about Silverlight, at least for now!
