HTML5 Challenges Silverlight

At its Oct. 2010 Professional Developers Conference, Microsoft emphasized that it will support HTML5 in future products such as Internet Explorer (IE) 9, which is currently in a public beta. HTML5 adds advanced user interface capabilities to the ubiquitous Web page markup language, potentially making obsolete other technologies (such as Silverlight and Adobe Flash) that have made up for HTML weaknesses. Silverlight’s future became unclear, but the upcoming Silverlight 5 was announced five weeks later at the Dec. 2010 Firestarter event. Organizations and ISVs should consider the trade-offs between HTML5 and Silverlight when planning Web application development.

Silverlight Fills HTML4 Gaps

Silverlight is Microsoft’s platform for rich Internet applications (RIAs), which are interactive graphical applications delivered over the Web and typically run in a browser. Silverlight RIAs run using a plug-in that is available for IE, Firefox, Chrome, and Safari on Windows and Mac OS X OSs. (A version developed in conjunction with a team at Novell supports Silverlight on Linux.)