Windows 8: The Death of the Silverlight Ecosystem?

It’s only been just over a week since Microsoft demoed their latest iteration of the Windows platform but in that short amount of time it’s already managed to stir up quite a bit of discussion from friends and foes alike. The foes were quick to call out the new OS’s tablet envy, conveniently forgetting Microsoft’s rhetoric that the next version of Windows after 7 was going to have a much more web centric focus, with the possibility of it being entirely cloud based. More interesting however is the discussion arising from long term developers on the Microsoft platform, and it’s not the kind of adulation and praise you’d normally expect.

During the D9 conference Microsoft said that the new tile mode in Windows 8 was based around HTML5 and Javascript applications. Whilst they did mention that all current apps built on the .NET platform should run as intended when running in the familiar desktop mode they made no mention of whether or not the .NET and Silverlight platforms could be used to create applications in the new style of interface. With Microsoft traditionally being quite favorable to developers the notion of having to re-skill to HTML5 and Javascript (not to mention reworking existing codebases) came as quite a shock to a lot of developers and their reaction was akin to an open revolt on the forums.

Rampant speculation soon followed and wasn’t helped by the fact that Microsoft has asked everyone to remain calm until their BUILD developer conference in September. It’s not the first time this sort of thing has happened either, a similar level of hubbub was roused when Microsoft was coy about Silverlight’s future when talking about Internet Explorer 9 and it’s dedication to web standards. They soon came out saying that they still saw a future in Silverlight, especially for the Windows Phone 7 platform, but many of them were left unconvinced. It’s then quite likely that this second round of doubt that Microsoft has cast over their third party developer’s futures was the straw that broke the camel’s back and all the blame is being leveled squarely at Microsoft.

For what it’s worth I feel their concerns are valid if the reaction to them is somewhat overblown. Microsoft has a long history of eating its own dog food and many of their client facing applications are built upon the technologies that so many are worried are going to disappear in the near future. The best example of this is their Windows Azure management console which is built entirely on Silverlight. Couple that with the fact that Microsoft has many partners with a very heavy investment in the platform and I find it hard to jump on the “Silverlight is dead” bandwagon, but that doesn’t necessarily mean Microsoft is committed to bringing Silverlight into the Windows 8 tablet world.

Sure it would be great to be able to create Silverlight applications on the new Windows 8 tile system and Microsoft would be leveraging off a lot of preexisting talent to help drive adoption of the platform. However it would also hinder Microsoft’s adoption of web standards, as many developers would favor using proprietary Microsoft technologies instead of attempting to reskill. They’d then be the slave of two masters: on the one hand the Silverlight crowd demanding ever more features and tools that are constrained to that platform and on the other the web standards crowd that has been Microsoft’s bug bear ever since alternative browsers started to gain real market traction. It’s not like Microsoft doesn’t have the resources to deal with this though, but I can understand their motivations should they want to eschew Silverlight in favour of a more standard environment.

So is this the end of the line for the Silverlight ecosystem and the developers who built their skills around it? Hard to say, with Microsoft being mum on it for the next few months we’ll just have to play it by ear until we get more information from them. In all honesty even if they do end up dropping Silverlight for HTML5 and Javascript I’d expect that the next release of Visual Studio would bring enough tools and resources with it to make the transition much easier than everyone is making it out to be. Hell if Adobe can build a Flash to HTML5 converter then it’s quite possible for Microsoft to do the same for Silverlight, even if that’s just a band-aid solution to satisfy developers who refuse to reskill.