Silverlight and HTML5

I was reading this post of my dear friend Shai and it brings in my mind some consideration. I never saw silverlight as a replacement for HTML even for HTML4, so I’m not so surprised by this new direction of SL that emerges from PDC.

SL could be useful to build RIA application on the web, but you should explain to your customers that they need to install a plugin, that it will not run on all platforms, etc etc, and I prefer plain HTML and jQuery.

SL streaming is really awesome, so this is really a point where having SL in your site can give you advantages, if you need to build an intranet backoffice with High interactivity, you could use SL (it is a backoffice you can force people to use SL), but for web application, HTML+jQuery really outperform any other solution.

Reading Bob Muglia thoughts about SL makes me happy, because it is exactly the conception I had of SL during the years.

Silverlight is our development platform for Windows Phone, he said. Silverlight also has some sweet spots in media and line-of-business applications, he said.

SL for Windows Phone is great, I was able to build application for a mobile device without the need to learn a complete new technology, and I can leverage my knowledge of WPF and use the fantastic VS debugger, but when it is time of web site, HTML is the answer.

Some people will complain that game development in HTML5 is more difficult than game development in SL, and this could be true, but it is something I do not care, because the primary purpose of the web is to convey information, not gaming.

And I hope that now the debate between SL vs HTML5 will be finally come to an end, each technology will have its area of application and the two probably will not overlap.

Alk.