As I have been watching the startup of new projects using the Dot Net stack it looks like Silverlight is being replaced with MVC or MVVM based on HTML5 capabilities. I’m not saying one is better or worse, or even making capability comparisons. Moreover, Silverlight has more capabilities in older browsers in those situations where installing a client tool is acceptable to the individual or company.
I know that we had to exclude Silverlight for different engagements in which I was a participant because the target audience would be dramatically opposed to its installation. However, the same audience would potentially adverse to upgrading their browser code to one supporting HTML5 capabilities.
Still, my main question is if the graphical capabilities of Silverlight will be replaced with JavaScript or other open systems JavaScript libraries supporting MVVM or MVC when it comes to the Microsoft Web applications. At least this removes some of the need for the developer to be aware of versioning issues that arise from Silverlight. Of course, there are other versioning issues if you use Javascript libraries. However, those tend to be updated readily through NuGet.
So, is Silverlight being phased out and more energy being spent on the open libraries? Would you start a new project using the Silverlight library? Share your thoughts here or by email to btaylor@sswug.org.
Cheers,
Ben