Microsoft releases Silverlight 5
Summary: Microsoft released to the Web on December 9 Silverlight 5, which could be the last major release of Microsoft's — Microsoft made available on December 9 for download the gold version of Silverlight 5, the latest version of its browser plug-in and Web …
Context & Ripple Effects
Silverlight 5's arrival closes out an arc that began in October 2010, when Microsoft admitted its strategy with Silverlight had shifted away from general Web development toward rich Internet applications inside and outside the browser. The release also lands nine days after Microsoft confirmed there would be no November ship of Silverlight 5, so the December 9 gold build is the slipped date finally met.
The stakes are framed by what Microsoft has said since: the April 2011 roadmap of coming Silverlight features and platform support promised premium video and line-of-business capabilities, but the company has stopped short of committing to a version 6 — leaving this release widely read as the plug-in's last major stop.
First-order effects
- Silverlight developers who built on the April 2011 feature roadmap now have their shipping toolset, but without a committed next version they face a de facto end-of-life decision on any new project started today.
Second-order effects
- Microsoft's own December push around the Windows Store and Metro-style apps gives those same developers an obvious internal alternative, accelerating migration off the plug-in toward the app model Microsoft is promoting for Windows 8.
Third-order effects
- If Silverlight 5 really is the last major release, the browser plug-in era of rich Internet applications — Flash, Silverlight and peers — consolidates around HTML5 plus native app stores as the two surviving delivery paths for interactive content.
The trend: Browser plug-in platforms are being wound down by their own vendors in favor of HTML5 on the open Web and store-distributed native apps, with Microsoft's Silverlight exit one of the clearest data points.