The Silverlight technology may not be available in upgraded versions anymore. Recently, Microsoft pulled down its Silverlight.net site from the Web and uploaded a developer’s network page instead. Though Microsoft has not made any official announcement about this issue, but signs are clear that no upgraded versions of Silverlight will be available in the future. The existing versions of the plug-in will still be supported but no updates will be introduced.
After Adobe bid farewell to its
Flash, Microsoft’s ASP.net based framework Silverlight has retired
to pave way for the coming of newer web applications based on HTML5 and likes. Though, the debate about which technology is the best
still prevails. However, every web development company
currently using Silverlight will have to search for a new and
advanced alternative. There isn’t an immediate call but the end of
is nearing, so this is the right time to begin planning.
Outsource web development was
never an easy path to pursue and with giants like Microsoft
developing rock strong platforms to support it only to withdraw them
later, then path becomes even more rocky. While Silverlight could not
beat the fan following of Flash, it still had a considerable network
of developers in place. Thus, this immediate shut down of
Silverlight.net was not conceived properly, leaving majority of
developer fraternity in frenzy.
After the initial shut down of the
Silverlight website, the users were redirected to MSDN website, but
sadly majority of links were broken. All this coming from an
enterprise like Microsoft is a matter of grave disgrace. To err is
human. The shutdown was announced to the developers beforehand but
the way of handling the entire procedure was pretty clumsy.
With the retirement of Silverlight,
companies and developers are likely to turn towards HTML 5 but the
shift will be gradual and might take considerable amount of time.
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