14 DAY TRIAL // In December 2010 Microsoft unveiled plans for the next generation of Silverlight to the world, promising that the Beta development milestone would be delivered to early adopters in the second quarter (Q2) of 2011. It looks like the software giant lived up to its promise. At the start of this week, Scott Guthrie, Corporate Vice President, .NET Developer Platform together with Walid Abu-Hadba, Corporate Vice President, Developer & Platform Evangelism Group and S. Somasegar, Senior Vice President, Developer Division revealed that Silverlight 5 Beta is just weeks away.
Specifically, Silverlight 5 Beta will be offered to testers at MIX 2011, which is scheduled to take place between April 12 and 14 in Las Vegas.
“As part of the continued support for scenarios that require plug-in based capabilities, we will ship a beta of Silverlight 5 at MIX, with some great demos for compelling scenarios,” the trio said.
“We believe Silverlight delivers the richest set of plug-in based capabilities available to developers today, making the choice of Microsoft technologies even more compelling in aggregate. At MIX, we’ll also talk about Windows Phone and the developer experience with Silverlight, XNA, and Visual Studio.”
As you can probably tell from the few words about the upcoming Beta Build of Silverlight 5, Guthrie, Abu-Hadba and Somasegar delivered a fresh perspective over HTML5 vs. Silverlight.
With Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) providing great support for HTML5 many feared that the software giant would shelve Silverlight, especially those that already invested in the technology.
Microsoft did not sing to the tune of HTML5-only fans arguing the fact that plug-ins are unnecessary, and instead provided assurance of its commitment to keeping Silverlight very much alive.
At this point in time, the Redmond company is working to deliver the final version of Silverlight 5 by the end of 2011, while continuing efforts to better support HTML5, and to advance the web standard.
“For plug-in based experiences, we believe Silverlight delivers the richest set of capabilities available to developers today, making the choice of Microsoft technologies even more compelling”, Guthrie, Abu-Hadba and Somasegar revealed.
“For Windows Phone development, Silverlight and XNA are the core fundamental building blocks for building rich experiences that take full advantage of Windows Phone.
“HTML5 is a solution for many scenarios, and developers should make the appropriate choice based on application needs, knowing that we have a heritage and a future vision of supporting a wide variety of technologies to meet those needs.”