Silverlight: Silverlight 5 is out. What does this mean to me?

by Vassil Terziev | Comments 12

Microsoft's long awaited release of Silverlight 5 happened on Friday. Silverlight 5.0 ships with a ton of new features, including new media and graphic improvements as well as extending the trust model to the browser (a big deal for some Line of Business applications). This release happened without any fanfare but that hardly diminishes its value. Some of the great things in the release are listed here.

While Microsoft did not announce that there was going to be a Silverlight 6, they did announce they would extend support for Silverlight 5 for ten years until 10 Dec 2021, as long as you are using a supported browser. It’s a small catch as you don’t have a guarantee that the SL plugin will run in newer versions next year. That said, in a locked-down corporate environment it’s not that much of an issue.

What does this mean for a .NET developer today, not in 2021? What it means is that Silverlight is still the best option for .NET developers interested in building rich, interactive browser-based LOB and data visualization applications designed specifically for Windows users. Silverlight combines the richness of a Windows desktop experience with the reach of a web application (e.g. all Windows XP, Vista, 7, Mac OS X, etc.). The addition of LOB-centric tooling for Silverlight in Visual Studio means that not only can you build desktop-like experiences in the browser, you can do it quickly and easily with the tools you already have. If you have control over the deployment environment, it’s definitely the easiest path to really rich applications today.

What does this mean for Telerik customers? As I have stated before, our Silverlight strategy has not shifted. Our mission at Telerik is to make developers more productive and we will continue to support Silverlight for as long as you, our customers, continue to use it. In addition, as you start to use new technology like HTML5 or WinRT, we will be there for you as well.

As always, we are hard at work getting ready to release our SL 5 support for you. As Michael said on his blog, we'll have our Silverlight 5 support for you just in time for Christmas. You will see how committed we are to Silverlight and WPF when we announce the roadmap for the first release in 2012.

Still confused over what technology to use for your next project? Stay tuned to this spot to find out some more information and guidance on that soon.

Vassil Terziev
Co-founder/CEO

Posted in: xaml silverlight

12 Comments

Alex

Well, i think Microsoft has not decided yet, what they want to do with Silverlight. On .net part, they are working on .net framework comparability profile (that include silverlight aswell), WinRT is the new COM, WPF is baked inside Windows 8. 

Something is changing inside MS is for sure. My bet, is that Microsoft will rollout a new "framework" that is WPF based, but that will allow you to target Windows/Desktop, Windows/WinRT, Xbox, Wp7, Web. That will have XAML/WPF/ .net at its core. Not sure about the web part, or how much they are willing to push (mb support windows only)

In any case, if you will feel something is burning bellow you feet, you can just out of the Silverlight train to desktop WPF. 

Markus
Thanks for this article and the comment of Alex. I agree with Alex. This information is very important for business developers, Software companies as well as IT departments because now they know with Silverlight 5 they can create new applications that will still run in 10 years and on which platform do you get such a safety?
For me the know how I got in Silverlight is a very good invest because I can use this also with WinRT and maybe in that framework Alex mentioned. I can imagine that there will be something new because I don't believe that Microsoft will give up the still growing Apple Mac Platform.
I am curious what comes next.
Ron Frick
Just wanted to say...I upgraded our project to SL5 and all of the Telerik's controls seem to be working good.
Aurelio Gomez
Hello Vassil,
I´d like to know, could you please provide a Silverlight Controls release roadmap? Specifically, how long are you planning to support Silverlight 4 (2012 Q1, Q2...?) and what will be the first release to officially support Silverlight 5 (2012 Q1?).
Thank you
Vassil Terziev
@Aurelio

The public roadmap is coming shortly. It will include info about out support for Silverlight 4. We usually provide 1 year support of previous SL versions during the transition to a newer version, in this case SL5. 

As for the first release that will be natively built on SL5 – it’s coming by the end of the month along with the Q3 2011 SP1 release.

Vassil Terziev
@Markus You are absolutely right - if an app was architected well, moving from SL to WPF is not mission impossible. We're running an internal experiment to convert an SL app to WPF and it's not that painful. We might share some of the findings:)
Vassil Terziev
@Finnur Even better. I guess that's what all of us hoped to see.
Thanks for sharing the link.
Marco Piumi
I think that Silverlight could become interesting if you ran a shortened version of Ado.Net with the support of the dataset.
Developers could reuse the code made ​​for Asp.net Web Services.
I think that the techniques invented for Silverlight (RIA etc..) Are too cumbersome for a complex development and professional.
Doug
It's already believed that IE in Win 8 Metro will not support plugins.  That's a bold bit of information right there. 
Yuri Paez
Thanks Vassil for your guidance. I'm not very shore about the success of HTML5, because in the past HTML have never been a real standard, doesn’t works in the same way for all browsers, that was, why I consider SL a real solution for web development. But now when MS don’t speak clearly about the future of SL. I don't know? But leave SL that has been probe his benefits in web development, for HTML that always has been a mess, I think is a big mistake. Better than that MS should make versions for SL for other platforms like iOS and android. Can you imagine that? It's could be the dream for all developers. Codes one, run everywhere. HTML5 promise this, but when? And the more important, could this happen? When in the past never occurs. What do you think about?

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