Silverlight 5
I had talked about Silverlight 5 earlier here and here. Though Silverlight is still used to build RIA apps for the web and is the platform of choice for Phone 7/7.5 development, Microsoft has not been very forthcoming on its future.
According to Mary-Jo Microsoft is about to release Silverlight 5. This is good, but it is also clear that Silverlight no longer retains the status of platform for cross device compatibility. That has been taken over by HTML 5.
Will there another version of Silverlight? Looking at the platform architecture for Windows 8, we see that front end for Metro apps is to be built in XAML (or HTML 5) and this no longer qualifies as WPF or Silverlight. The Blend skills we learnt will continue to be supported, but it is now only XAML and backend (C# or VB.NET etc.). It will probably mean XAML based apps for thick client or thin client and that's about it.
Silverlight does make an appearance on this platform architecture as the .NET SL block on the bottom right, but that seemingly is only for backward compatibility. So while Silverlight still exists, it probably is reaching the end of life in its current form. It will continue to live as XAML front end, but will not be known as Silverlight as such.
What is your take on it?
