Adobe recently announced that the company would be terminating its development of its Mobile Flash platform in order to focus its efforts on HTML5. Now that Adobe is onboard with the HTML5 bandwagon, is Microsoft next to kill off its flash-competitor Silverlight platform?
For those that don’t know, Silverlight was launched in 2007 as a competitor to Adobe’s Flash. The platform frew to incorporate developer tools, plugins, and support for advanced features such as streaming content. Silverlight never really grew to be as popular as Flash, but did catch on a little bit.
A new report suggests that Microsoft may be terminating its Silverlight development in order to focus on its own HTML5 endeavours. Microsoft has already reduced the size of its Silverlight team.
Microsoft is expected to release Silverlight 5 later this month but many people are unclear whether any browsers outside of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer will be supported. On top of that, will we ever see Silverlight 6?
As Mary Jo Foley reports over at ZDNet, even if Silverlight is killed, it will still live on its legacy. In an interview with Foley, Microsoft’s Regional Director stated the following during an interview: “It’s pretty clear to me that the principles of Silverlight, including the use of XAML as a markup language, C# and VB .NET as programming languages, a streamlined .NET CLR (Common Language Runtime) profile, packaged deployment over HTTP and a sandboxed security environment, are alive and well in the native XAML/.NET approach to developing Metro-style apps on Windows 8. It may not be not Silverlight to the letter, but it’s Silverlight in spirit and natively supported by the operating system to boot.”
Adobe killed off Mobile Flash in favor of HTML5 on November 9th and claimed that since HTML5 is now universally supported on major mobile browsers, Mobile Flash was no longer necessary. “This makes HTML5 the best solution for creating and deploying content in the browser across mobile platforms. We are excited about this, and will continue our work with key players in the HTML community, including Google, Apple, Microsoft and RIM, to drive HTML5 innovation they can use to advance their mobile browsers.”