What happened to Silverlight?

Now that BUILD2011 is wrapping up, I’m reviewing the talks and watching some of them online via Channel 9.  Unfortunately, I was not able to attend in person.  One big question that has been on my mind, and many other people’s minds too, is what was going to happen to Silverlight.  I have been largely ignoring the rumors that Microsoft was killing Silverlight and it is a dead-end technology, and sat tight waiting in anticipation for the Microsoft BUILD 2011 conference.  So I’m going through the schedule and out of the 236 sessions, not one mentions Silverlight in the title.

At this point, my concern that some of the statements that Silverlight is dead may be true… But on further analysis I find that 15 talks have XAML in their title:

Date	Session Info	Speaker
9/14/2011	Metro style apps using XAML: what you need to know	Joe Stegman
9/14/2011	Metro style apps using XAML: Make your app shine	Marco Matos
9/14/2011	Stand out with styling and animation in your XAML app	John Papa
9/14/2011	Build polished collection and list apps using XAML	Hamid Mahmood
9/15/2011	Make great touch apps using XAML	Alnur Ismail
9/15/2011	Reach all your customer’s devices with one beautiful XAML user interface	Tim Heuer
9/15/2011	Build data-driven collection and list apps using XAML	Laurence Moroney
9/15/2011	A deep dive into Visual Studio 11 Express for designing Metro style apps using XAML	Joanna Mason
9/15/2011	Build accessible Metro style apps using XAML	Alnur Ismail
9/15/2011	Integrating stunning media experiences in XAML	Marco Matos
9/15/2011	The lifetime of XAML text: from input to display through printing	Chipalo Street
9/16/2011	Windows Phone XAML apps	Jesse Liberty
9/16/2011	Tips and tricks for developing Metro style apps using XAML	Tim Heuer
9/16/2011	Unit testing your metro style apps built using XAML	Peter Provost
9/16/2011	Build world-ready Metro style apps using XAML	Tim Heuer

XAML is the foundation of Silverlight and the key to building user interfaces.  Microsoft started working on XAML over a decade ago and first released it to the public as an alpha component of the Longhorn operating system code named Avalon at the 2003 PDC.  In fact Avalon was one of the three cornerstones of the new OS (Avalon = user interface, Indigo = communication, WinFS = file system).  Well, as you may already know, Avalon evolved into XAML and Windows Presentation Framework (WPF).  Later WPF/E (E for Everywhere) evolved into Silverlight.  Indigo became Windows Communication Framework (WCF). And WinFS, the database-like file system, was dropped.  Eventually Longhorn was released after a false start as Vista on the client computers and Windows Server 2008 on the back end.

So for those of you worried about the future of Silverlight and/or WPF, the Metro SDK looks like the evolution of Silverlight.  Metro runs on Windows 8 desktops and laptops plus on the new ARM tablets.  I’m not sure how much of the code will port to Metro, only time will tell, but the skills invested in teams building Silverlight and/or WFP applications will definitely still be required for building in the new Windows interface.

About these ads