Microsoft Releases Silverlight 5 (with Life Support)
The folks at Microsoft have finally released Silverlight 5, the latest—and perhaps last—major update of the company's .NET technology for building rich interactive applications that can run out-of-browser or as a Web browser plug-in.
Silverlight 5 advances features for building rich client and media applications. It supports the PivotViewer and RichTextblock controls, improves text clarity (OpenType and text wrap) and offers a Postscript Vector printing API. It also adds support for WS-Trust in-browser, 3-D graphics, 64-bit apps and hardware decoding of H.264 video. Here's an overview of these features and more in Silverlight 5.The upcoming Internet Explorer 10 for the Windows desktop will be compatible with Silverlight, according to Microsoft, but the Metro-style version of IE10 for Windows 8 will not support the Silverlight browser plug-in. Windows Phone 7.5 (formerly codenamed Mango) is based on Silverlight 4 and remains a distinct platform. Silverlight 5 is supported in IE on Vista and Windows 7, Firefox, Chrome and Safari, according to Microsoft.
Silverlight 5 was announced about a year ago during a Firestarter event keynote given by Scott Guthrie who was then corporate vice president of the .NET platform. Even then, questions about Silverlight's future in the wake of Microsoft's growing emphasis on HTML5/JavaScript, were already drowning out news of another upgrade.
Despite the growing concerns of a loyal developer community, when the Silverlight 5 beta was released at MIX 11 in April, the conference focused on Internet Explorer 10 and its support of HTML5/JavaScript, and developments related to Windows Phone 7.
Microsoft's assertions that Silverlight is a strategic technology for client apps inside and outside of the browser, apps on devices (Windows Phone and Windows Embedded) and media solutions, have not convinced a lot of developers that the platform has a viable future, even on Windows. Lately much of the discussion has moved to XAML and how easily developers can transition their Silverlight skillsets to building Windows 8 Metro-style apps for the Windows Runtime.
Windows 8 and WinRT were unveiled in mid-September. The Silverlight 5 release candidate, which appeared at the beginning of September, was overshadowed by the upcoming Windows 8 announcements.
One bit of news with today's announcement of note: The company says that it will offer a Microsoft Support Lifecycle (MSL) policy for Silverlight (as a tool) for the first time. For Silverlight 5, the support continues through October 12, 2021. The company has also pledged to provide 12 months notice before discontinuing support.
Get the Silverlight 5 SDK, Silverlight 5 Tools for Visual Studio 2010 SP1 and related tooling here.
Express your thoughts on Silverlight 5 and the future of the platform. Are you downloading the latest tooling or moving on? Drop me a line at krichards@1105media.com.
Posted by Kathleen Richards on 12/09/2011 at 4:44 PM