Silverlight: The SkyDrive is (not) Falling! -- Visual Studio Magazine

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Silverlight: The SkyDrive is (not) Falling!

Microsoft this week unveiled an updated version of its SkyDrive cloud storage and file sharing service, which had previously been based on Silverlight. SkyDrive now employs an HTML5 interface.

Predictably, the announcement ignited fresh speculation that Silverlight is as good as dead. Stop me if you've heard this before.

Not helping matters has been the stony silence coming out of Microsoft. As Redmond Developer News Editor Kathleen Richards noted in her RDN Express blog (Unexpected Drama: Windows 8 and Silverlight), Microsoft's lack of communication around Silverlight has created a charged environment. For now, developers are being told to wait for the BUILD conference in September for word on Silverlight's direction.

Are developers convinced that support for programming environments is a zero-sum game? Must Microsoft's support for a true, cross-platform programming target in HTML5 come at the expense of its support for a closed, yet powerful programming target in Silverlight? I mean, Microsoft has done just fine promoting and evolving ASP.NET MVC alongside Silverlight/WPF. And it has for a decade evolved C# and Visual Basic. And don't even get me started on the company's long history developing multiple, concurrent operating systems.

Microsoft has certainly shown that it can do two things at the same time.

Scott Hanselman, in a recent blog post on the release of the Web Standards Update for Visual Studio, which improves HTML5 tooling and support, wrote: "I didn't mention Silverlight because it has nothing to do with Silverlight. I said once, 'Just because your favorite technology isn't mentioned in a keynote doesn't mean it's dead.' Assume that the same rule applies to a Blog Post."

Hanselman makes a good point, even as he misses a larger issue. Developers aren't worried because Silverlight wasn't mentioned at a keynote. They are worried because the vision around Silverlight has gone squirrely, even as Microsoft itself has gone silent. Programming platforms are like any investment. Their value is entirely wrapped up in "what's next." And right now, a lot of people are not at all convinced they know "what's next" with Silverlight.

So is the HTML5-enabled update of SkyDrive a sign that Silverlight is doomed? Not at all. But until developers get some clarity on Silverlight, it's hard to blame them for being concerned.

Posted by Michael Desmond on 06/22/2011 at 1:52 PM

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Reader Comments:

Thu, Jun 30, 2011 Albert

With the way Microsoft is treating the Silverlight issue, they'll have a hard time selling any new platform to developers. After all, who's going to be sure they don't pull it just at the moment when you've started shifting your business to it. If anything, this will push people towards using open source stacks where there's less danger that the owner of a technology suddenly deprecates it and you're left stranded.

Thu, Jun 30, 2011 Doug Stein Lake Oswego, OR

How about this scenario? 1) Silverlight the tooling remains and improves; 2) Silverlight tools target a HTML5/JS runtime so your silverlight apps can run on all devices including iOS devices. 3) Microsoft is holding its cards to its chest so it can roll-out a working solution without Apple pissing on the parade due to advanced notice. ============== I don't think Microsoft knows how to do secrecy as well as Apple - and it shouldn't try to create a Jobsian reality-distortion field because they usually get the polarity reversed and end up spinning gold into straw. At any rate, they do need to execute perfectly at the BUILD conference or they'll lose the developer platform and then won't be able to recover leadership in the delivery platform.

Fri, Jun 24, 2011 Yuri

The thing is, MS has both damaged the brand and developer trust. It's amazing to see the numbers of developers who love Silverlight rising up everywhere in concern, and yet MS could seemingly care less. From a business perspective their moves seem really dumb. They have a great essentially native app platform in Silverlight, and yet they're heading towards the stone age with HTML? Crazy. Steve Jobs is laughing, I'm sure - he's making vast fortunes on native Objective C++ apps filling his appstore. MS thinks the future is in the Cloud (Windows Azure) so they think they can rely on HTML5 for lots of users. What their forgetting is that you won't sell mobile devices (tablets) if the user experience doesn't compete with iPad/iPhone. Regardless, developers won't forget how MS treated them.

Fri, Jun 24, 2011 Beau Brownlee GA

I'm both a HTML5/Silverlight developer. I've seen both shine in different ways. This is the first article that I've read that actually reflects what I'm feeling right now. I'm very happy that windows8 is going to include HTML5 apps. That is a great idea. I'm not afraid of that and I don't think it's a Silverlight killer at all. Anyone who does does not understand Silverlight. I am, however, extremely concerned with the silence from Microsoft. It used to be that guys like Tim Heuer, John Papa and others were very responsive to the Silverlight community. Not anymore. I'm very disappointing with feeling that when Microsoft should be speaking up and giving us some 'ammo' they are just slinking back into the shadows. Are we seriously supposed to just sit and wait until September?? Not cool MS.

Thu, Jun 23, 2011 Butler Reynolds USA

I just love to hear people talk about "open standards" when you can't get even simple things from HTML4/CSS2 to behave the same across browsers without frustration. Funny how the most popular Javascript frameworks are ones that hide all the browser if/then/else madness. Standards? Looks more like a box of band-aids to me. I guess the younger crowd is fine with HTML/Javascript b/c they've probably never experienced working with nice, consistent, and mostly well behaved technology. Tinkering with these quirky technologies based on open standards is fun, but when there's real work to get done, I don't have time to hack around. Who knows what will happen to Microsoft's technology going forward? The best technology does not always win. The market rejected the superior OS/2 for a decade of Microsoft's blue screens of death. Looks like a lot of programmers prefer writing ECMA spaghetti code to something cleaner and more powerful.

Thu, Jun 23, 2011 Dan Kegel Los Angeles

If Silverlight were to disappear from the face of the web, nobody would really miss it, I think. The future seems to belong to free and open standards like HTML 5. Three cheers for Chrome, without which Javascript and IE would still be slow, and things like Silverlight might still have a chance. Full disclosure: I'm a Linux user, and used to work for Google on Chrome, so take the above with the appropriate grain of salt!

Thu, Jun 23, 2011 bigpalooka hoboken, nj

It's hard for me to follow Microsoft with incidental technology. They've abandoned or deprecated too much for me to use them for anything but the core technologies. Workflow, anyone? Do I trust that Silverlight will be supported in the future? Nope. Do I think MS is going to lose interest in LINQ? Thanks, but I'm going to stick with SQL stored procedures.

Thu, Jun 23, 2011

Funny how bing maps removed SL for it's bird's eye feature last year - coincidence?

Thu, Jun 23, 2011 M Whitener USA

The very limited multiplatform reach of .NET has been disappointing for a decade. MS should push Silverlight and .NET harder than ever, in a true multiplatform fashion. MS can still dominate in application development and delivery, but they will need to deploy everywhere, not just web and Windows.

Wed, Jun 22, 2011

Microsoft has been arrogantly treating its core of developers like crap over this whole Silverlight vs. HTML5 fiasco. They have been completely ignoring what we've been telling them we want - Silverlight, not HTML5. Maybe those of us who use SkyDrive should switch to using DropBox in protest.

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