Silverlight and HTML5 and Your Future

63
OCT 29 10

I love HTML5 and I also love Silveright. I’m actually not too broken up about the emphasis on HTML5 at the PDC this year. HTML5 a nascent technology, it’s true. There are issues: We built agent8ball.com in about 4 weeks. It likely would taken about half of that in Silverlight. Also, we dealt with all kinds of browser compat issues. Kevin finally just checked in support for sound effects in Firefox last week! In fact, compat been a fight the whole way. Oh, and documentation is still emerging ( == bad) and I truly love/hate Javascript in the extreme. But in spite of all of that, it’s been one of my favorite projects this year!

On the other hand, I really love Silverlight and I spent three sleepless nights this week thinking about how I can build more WP7 apps.

So here’s the thing: HTML5 is an undeniable part of the future and it would be foolish for Microsoft to ignore it. It’s the 5 bazillion pound Elephant in the room (note: my spell checker didn’t complain about bazillion. cool!). HTML has always been the lingua franca for browser apps and it’s just gotten much much better. You can’t look the other way when that happens. Microsoft can’t and developers shouldn’t, especially if you want to build browser-based experiences and apps.

I think Microsoft may have gotten some of the subtleties of their messaging wrong at the PDC this year. Everyone is up in arms because they feel like the investment they’ve made into Silverlight for past 3-4 years has been in vain. They feel that way because Ballmer led with HTML5 hoohaw (not in the spellchecker) and because much of the press coverage has been about the lack of Silverlight announcements.

The Silverlight Casualty Count is Low

But here’s my take: there is a Silverlight casualty but it turns out to be a small one. MS is saying that you should use HTML5 for some of the browser stuff that you may have been considering Silverlight for. That’s not a big deal. I don’t want to trivialize it, but I’m not too broken up to think that some web experiences that might have belonged to Silverlight are going go to HTML5. Let’s call the Silverlight/Flash war over and declare HTML5 as the winner.

I don’t mind that. In fact, I think it’s a great place to be! HTML5 is fun. The tools and frameworks are still emerging, but the next 2 years are going to a parade of of plugins, frameworks and tools that make authoring HTML5 even faster and better. The compat thing is an issue today, but if you look at the speed of innovation in browsers and the trend toward hiding/abstracting that stuff via frameworks and tools (think jQuery), I suspect it’s a problem with a short half-life.

I’m Awesome at XAML…Now What?

Now, let’s look at what’s left on the table for Silverlight. First, Microsoft has been crystal clear that Silverlight is the bet they’re making for devices (phones, tablets, set-tops, etc.). We might be justified in feeling marginalized if devices meant “robots and refrigerators” but we can all see that mobile computing and consumer-facing devices are a great bet. As a UI dev, these are big opportunities.

Second, Silverlight and WPF are still great contenders for desktop apps. At least in the short term desktop apps still really matter (I’m using one right now!) and Silverlight and WPF are still your best bets. Microsoft just build Visual Studio in WPF. Incidentally, I don’t feel like WPF 4 has gotten the love it deserves from the community. With the changes to text rendering and LayoutRounding, you can literally create pixel perfect apps in WPF. And Silveright lets you do that across OS’s.

It will be interesting to see what happens in Windows 8. Microsoft will undoubtedly build out an app store for desktop apps and (presumably) that will include support for Silverlight based apps. Finger crossed!

A Thought

Something to think about: you and Microsoft are in a similar situation. You both invested a lot in Silverlight. Microsoft has spent the last 4 years of its career telling everyone how awesome it is too. Change is inevitable, but neither of you are anxious to throw away a big investment like that. Software matters more today than yesterday and less today than tomorrow. As Microsoft changes, they’ll bring you along. They need you more than you need them.

If You Only Read Summaries

Okay, so here’s the summary:

1. You should care about HTML5. As a UI technology, it’s pretty dang cool. And it means you get to use a lot of jQuery which is also pretty dang cool (I think I told someone I have a mancrush on jQuery last week).

2. You should keep caring about Silverlight. It absolutely matters for the next several years. The “devices” market where MS is focusing their Silverlight efforts (phone, set-top, etc.) is your future.

3. Microsoft may have gotten the messaging wrong but that’s partially our fault—we need to listen to what they’re saying and not to what they’re not saying.

63 Comments

Mike Wolf / OCT 29 2010

As always Well written and pragmatic. At the end of the day, we got into wpf/sl because we are into RIchUI and making the boring hot.

HTML 5, WPF,Silverlight,Flash,Flex,Ajax,WhatEVERTHEHELLISNEXT.

Ron / OCT 29 2010

Silverlight is failing because it can’t produce reasonable font quality on desktop PC’s. Text in Silverlight is of very low fidelity. That’s the number one reason Silverlight apps look childish and customers realized this. You simply can’t read a paragraph of text in Silverlight.. That was also the main reason for WPF slow adoption.. Microsoft invested heavily in text clarity for WPF instead of Silverlight which is shame..

World Wide News Flash / OCT 29 2010

nerdplusart.com | Silverlight and HTML5 and Your Future…

I found your entry interesting do I’ve added a Trackback to it on my weblog :)…

Laurent Bugnion / OCT 29 2010

This is an awesome post. My main reaction to the whole HTML5 / Silverlight / WPF business is that we all win in the end. Thanks for bringing some reason into that whole business.

Cheers,
Laurent

Kelps / OCT 29 2010

It doesn’t get clearer than that.

Jody Simkins / OCT 29 2010

Well written. Concise. Rational. Thanks.

Robby Ingebretsen / OCT 29 2010

@Mike, Laurent and Kelps.. Thanks guys!

@Ron There’s definitely room to grow there. For what it’s worth, every UI platform has text problems. Flash, browsers, Winforms and WPF (and even Photoshop) all require a little game playing when it comes to getting text right. I agree, though, that it’s a tougher game in Silverlight than I would like. The super high-res screen on a phone and super big text on a TV seem to make that problem less prominent when you’re on a device :).

Mason Brown / OCT 29 2010

Good read. Thanks for the insight.

It’s funny. I’ve noticed a dramatic increase in demand for Flash in recent months. Silverlight feels positioned merely as a phone platform these days. HTML5 is the trendy topic of conversation, but still feels like it needs to evolve before it’s a reliable performer. It’s the Justin Bieber of web technologies. Also, HTML5 gets way too much credit for features that are just Javascript or CSS3. I can’t wait for someone to append a new version number to JS so everyone can chase that carrot dangle too. Creative technologists in years to come are going to look back on this era and laugh at all the smoke and mirrors.

(Man. It sure is nice expressing yourself on someone else’s blog, where you don’t have to qualify every statement. )

Manoj / OCT 29 2010

Cool thoughts….I agree every bit of it…:)

John / OCT 29 2010

Thank you for being a voice of reason in an apparent sea of insanity. I don’t understand all the people who are concluding that Silverlight is dead just because IE is supporting HTML5. What did they expect, that IE would continue to be HTML4 only?

Galen Murdock / OCT 29 2010

Excellent post, Robby. Thanks for being an early voice for those of us who see a vibrant future in Silverlight and WPF, even though HTML5 is sweet and tasty.

Ron / OCT 29 2010

Have you ever managed to tweak the text quality to something that’s even remotely close to text as seen on an HTML page or Winform form, for let say 10px to 12px in Arial, Verdana or any other standard font ? :)

Joe / OCT 29 2010

I feel that you miss the point.
There is a contradiction to the message at PDC. All the cool technology is based around .NET. The C# new features, WPF futures, new technologies etc…

For HTML5/CSS3 etc.. there were no developer tools shown or supported. This is a developer conference. None of the .NET investments over the last 10 years wil work on the client side. This is MS saying that they give up on their client strategy. THe future is HTML5. All coding on the client will be JavaScript.

If MS wanted to sell HTML5 as a future strategy then they should have shown it along side a GWT solution – like Volta, or even Script#. Their lack of solution here should have developers concerned. For rich clients they may see this with projects being lost to Google GWT – where you can still share code between the client and the server and still use HTML5.

Josh Smith / OCT 29 2010

It is the same song and dance all over again. The technology names are mere variables in a profit creation algorithm. Geeks love this drama though, as if it matters somehow. If all the time and energy spent discussing this crap was instead spent trying to help the less fortunate live better lives, the world would be a much better place. Oh well, that’s life!

Virgil_O / OCT 29 2010

I’ve posted this thoughts on Jeremy Likness site already, I just wanted to add that I agree that HTML 5 will be the next hot thing for general purpose – presentation – documentation sites, but for LOB apps or for any serious multimedia sites, hehe, maybe in 11 years … or who knows…

I’ve worked over the years with some technologies – PHP, HTML, JavaScript, ASP.NET, VC++, WPF, Silverlight. The one I was truly impressed by now is Silverlight, I’m still amazed how fast some things can be done with it and how well it is architected. It works over the web and on different platforms! Maybe that’s why it’s getting so much flame lately…
I’m going to say something straight – that the people blaming Silverlight, or saying it is dead are in one of these situations:
1) They have no idea what it is.
2) They just hate Microsoft.
3) Silverlight/WPF have a steep learning curve, lets be honest they are not so easy to learn by the average web-developer. You tend to hate something you don’t understand …
4) They invested in something else already and they feel threatened by the quality of Silverlight.

Djonatas / OCT 29 2010

Excellent Post, I think silverlight is the reality of today and tomorrow….

Ian Smith / OCT 29 2010

The real mistake made at PDC wasn’t just ignoring the “Silverlight” word, but effectively just taking the Silverlight keynote from 3 years ago and delivering it again word-for-word but with the word “Silverlight” swapped out and “HTML5″ dropped in to replace it. Trotting out the same old 10,000 foot viewpoint from 3 years ago to a DEVELOPER audience and assuming they wouldn’t notice is just really really stupid.

Djonatas / OCT 29 2010

Excellent Post, I think silverlight is the reality of today and tomorrow

rodo / OCT 29 2010

Silverlight is dead, quite a surprise they have for us in pdc this year. I think most devs arround the world were expecting just the oposite, the Silverlight 5 announce.
I think Microsoft should had been more honest and recognize the big mistake they made, wasting so much time and resources in a technology that is never going to be used massively.
I assume my mistake as a developor for the resourses I invested in Silverlight.
The most sad thing is there aren’t any tools for HTML 5 in .NET, those four years of Silverlight left us with the hands empty.
I think is time to move to GTW, every evidence is screaming that Google is the future.

Trevor de Koekkoek / OCT 29 2010

@Joe, I don’t see how say that none of the .NET investements are on the client. First of all, they are not abandoning Silverlight. In fact I think its presence on the web is just gaining momentum. But furthermore, they have the new JTemplates technology developed in conjunction with the JQuery team. Then of course their advancements in ASP.NET MVC. HTML5 is still immature and no-one has tool support for it yet. I agree that GWT is an impressive technology, but it is still Javascript based. Silverlight is still a more powerful platform for developing client-side applications than GWT or Script# or other mixed-language solutions.

Rob / OCT 29 2010

Robby, do you think there will be a Silverlight 5?

Robby Ingebretsen / OCT 29 2010

@Everyone Let’s be clear–Silverlight isn’t dead. That wasn’t point of this post. There are even a whole bunch of browser scenarios (LOB, DRM/Streaming video, etc.) where Silverlight is the right choice. HTML5 isn’t everything.

@Rob I’m quite certain there will be a Silverlight 5.

@Joe if you’re trying to recoup your investment in .NET client technologies, you still have tons of places to do that (including Silverlight), but it’s true that a subset of browser-based scenarios should be HTML5 and not Silverlight.

@Ian I agree. The message to client developers was confusing/bad this year. I think they should have led with the phone. The fact is that most MS developers have a set of skills around .NET and they want to know how/where they can use those in the next 5+ years.

@Josh Yeah, we all seem pretty afraid of learning something new, don’t we.

samcov / OCT 30 2010

Nobody’s concerned about HTML 5, we all knew it was coming, and expected it to garner the lions share of apps, that’s not news.

What was news was the way Microsoft tanked Silverlight. That message will be seen by a lot of people without the technical background to understand the differences, and guess what? A lot of those people have the power to change the direction of development in a lot of companies.

The perception is that Silverlight is taking a DEEP back seat, and may possibly be one of the walking dead that Microsoft has so many of. You can ignore that history if you want to, but that message tells a lot of people to stop buying XAML tooling, because WPF has also been dissed, and may be on the way out.

It doesn’t matter what tech guys like us think, business decisions have to be made about scarce resources.

I too love HTML apps, and the beauty of this is that we have standardized middleware that couldn’t give a crap about what the client is, it’s going to work fine with HTML, SL, Flash, Java, you name it, and with websockets, some of the things we were doing SL only, will be able to be done in HTML 5.

So, I don’t mind going back a bit, but I’m sure going to miss SL development, which truly has given me some of the best client building experience of my life.

And yes, I know it’s not dead physically, but from a business perspective, it’s on life support.

Lee / OCT 30 2010

The irony of the whole argument is that the player that everyone used to remote attended the PDC: was written in Silverlight…

Craig / OCT 30 2010

Good post, Hammer and nail.

There’s another slide in the PDC deck about the convergence of Silverlight and WPF, and if this is something that caught anyone by surprise then you’re asleep at the keyboard. There have always been, and will always be, a need for both Native and web apps. HTML4 was a creaky old pain and needed an update, Silverlight still is a powerful way of delivering native apps over the web and cross platform.

They will coexist and well.

Fredrik / OCT 30 2010

Excellent Post! Very interesting.

I personally think that Silverlight will live on, but maybe not so much on the web when HTML5 will. But guaranteed it will play a big role on phones, tablets, and above all it will definitely be a big part of Windows 8 if Microsoft creates an app store for Windows.

The future is sweet.

Arthur Csertus / OCT 31 2010

I understand your point and I can say I feel the same way. I’ve developed a travel trails app for the Imagine Cup WP7 Rockstar Award this year and it was lots of fun using xaml to develop it. I am starting an HTML5 project next year and I am looking forward to it but I am still head and heart thinking about WP7 apps and what I should develop next.

Great post. I yust retweetet it.

Cheers, Arthur from Timisoara, Romania

Derek Lakin / OCT 31 2010

I thoroughly enjoyed reading your post at PDC on the Windows Phone 7 device I was given as the drama unfolded around me. It was great to find a voice of reason amongst a lot of venom and confusion :)

HTML5 seems so win another battle in the RIA wars « Visual WebGui Web Blog / NOV 01 2010

[...] “Silverlight is dead, quite a surprise they have for us in PDC this year. I think most devs arround the world were expecting just the opposite, the Silverlight 5 announce. I think Microsoft should had been more honest and recognize the big mistake they made, wasting so much time and resources in a technology that is never going to be used massively. I assume my mistake as a developer for the resources I invested in Silverlight. The most sad thing is there aren’t any tools for HTML 5 in .NET, those four years of Silverlight left us with the hands empty. I think is time to move to GTW, every evidence is screaming that Google is the future.” (Quoted from this blog) [...]

Serge / NOV 01 2010

Please look at the Silverlight future from the business prospective. It’s quite clear that silverlight team is going to work heavily on “universal” mobile version. And nobody is going to work on PC version because of lack of resources and we can forget about MacOS X at all. Silverlight is the best technology right now. But I don’t want to invest in it anymore because in 3 years I’ll have to redo everything.

Wayne / NOV 01 2010

I agree HTML will always be there. My concern with HTML is that it was primarily designed to render stateless static linked content. It then somehow became twisted into something the browsers could never really agree or standardize upon. Technology companies will always feel the need to put their spin in it to try to differentiate themselves from their competitors. The fact is that Silverlight is a browser plugin like flash, except that Flash was designed for animation and has a poor programming model. Silverlight and has been designed to address the user experience issues that are lacking in the browsers and to make it easier to developers and designers to work with it. I love Silverlight and I loved learning it. As a developer, I would choose Silverlight / XAML ( eXtensible Application Markup Language) over HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) for any internet based application. I see HTML as simply just the host now.

JackSchitt / NOV 02 2010

please, please, please bother to type the word ‘compatibility’ when referring to it – ‘compat’ makes you sound lame – nobody but YOU refers to it as compat….

JackSchitt / NOV 02 2010

p.s get real chaps Silverlight is being dropped because it has failed in the marketplace anyone pursuing this might as well dig a big hole, drop all their money into it and go back to bed.. – end of. (J++ anyone?)

Altruism « Applying philosophy to life / NOV 02 2010

[...] happened to read this comment on a post about the relevance of Silverlight (a web software development framework from Microsoft) It is the [...]

Cigdem Patlak / NOV 02 2010

This is an excellent post; I completely agree that “change is inevitable” if you are in any field of technology, not just development. Silverlight and HTML5 can complement each other to create awesome Web experiences; there is no reason to only focus on competing against the other one all the time!

MikeG / NOV 04 2010

I write Silverlight code for a living. I wouldn’t hold much credence about statements made at PDC. Having done client side coding for over 30 years (and some server side) with Microsoft technology and javascript and html/css, Silverlight/WPF is by far the most powerful client technology for developing UI I have ever seen. HTML5 looks promising, but I suspect the tooling for it are years away. With Blend and Silverlight, a developer who knows what they are doing can crank at a web application that dwarfs any other client technology on the web. And the third party support is so extensive for Silverlight currently, that it will be years before HTML5 has any breath in it to compete with the Silverlight experience. Microsoft should definitely reconsider their statement. If they continue to evolve Silverlight in the browser, they will easily have the upper hand in internet front end technology.

Carter Bureau / DEC 30 2010

Thanks for publishing on this topic. There’s a bunch of good technical information on the internet today. You’ve got a lot of that info here on your web site. I’m highly impressed – I try to keep a couple of blogs reasonably live, but it’s hard sometimes. You have done an impressive job with this one in particular. How do you manage it?

HTML5 is joke / MAR 17 2011

Can somebody really think that JavaScript is comparable object-oriented languages like C# what Silverlight using?

HTML5 cant be never revolution on web without object-oriented language.

Even HTML5 itself as presentation layer is not comparable with Silverlight.

Example:

http://www.c-sharpcorner.com/UploadFile/mahesh/SilverlightComboBox12022008122421PM/SilverlightComboBox.aspx

Figure 8

Does HTML5 allow to me put pictures and checkboxes and whatever into combobox item?

In Silverlight i can manage whatever controls but in HTML5 i cant.

HTML5 is nothing.

SilverGeek: Gamil / JUN 23 2011

I’ll link your post in my blog .. I love your post and your friendly way of posting.. Thank you for giving me a hope, mate.

VMaster / JUL 21 2011

Hi All
I agree with Virgil_0 and Html5 is joke, i developed in many language and script such as pascal, delphi, c, html, php, asp, java script . . . but .Net is great and xaml is my lost programming strategy. i know we need change so i should teach and use some script syntax such as jquery, html5, css . . . but that is suitable for UI enhancement, that is not be able to use Instead of object oriented language. some of script programing such as java is powerfull because has object oriented base not same as html5 many tags and some java script function without any classified and oop viewing. i hope so microsoft know where does go!