Steve Jobs first threw down the gauntlet earlier this year stating that HTML5 is the future, and now Microsoft is in lock step with Apple and Jobs. At the PDC10 conference (held last week of October) Microsoft in a subtle manner stated the future is in HTML5. This change of direction was confirmed by Bob Muglia (the head of Server and Tools at Microsoft) in the article link below:
Now I’ll just chime in with my 2 cents on Silverlight, and this change in direction.
- Platforms such as Silverlight and Flash are not cross platform. My definition of cross platform is across a multitude of devices; this would include desktops, smart devices such as smartphones and iPads, and even GoogleTV. Even if you could port Silverlight and Flash to a mobile platform, the performance of the site is diminished as most smart devices are not adequately equipped to handle Flash or Silverlight. Secondly, even if you could get Flash and Silverlight to work on a mobile platform, you still would have to make coding changes in order to make it mobile compatible.
- HTML5 has proven to be capable of delivering rich content faster than the other platforms, and has also allowed mobile sites to take on the look and feel of native applications. For example, if you go on your iPhone to Yahoo, ESPN, CNN, or YouTube itself, they are all powered by HTML5 (this is even more evident if you have an iPad when looking at full sites).
- Microsoft is not investing as much in Silverlight as it has in the past, for example if you take a look at IE9; they have invested heavily in making it one of the best HTML5 browser out there. In fact, W3C has crowned IE9 as the best HTML5 browser.
That doesn’t necessarily mean that Silverlight will go away, it seems the focus will be more on windows 7 mobile and embedded devices (such as kiosks) in using Silverlight to provide rich content, but the limited usage for Silverlight and change in direction by Microsoft is just a further shift towards HTML5. I am just curious as to what Adobe will do next to combat potential revenue loss from less Flash enabled sites.
