Was presenting at the Hamilton User Group the other week and spent a bit of time talking about where Silverlight was going and what this could mean for the future of web applications (as opposed to “websites” that are focused predominantly on displaying text and images and don’t require too much user interaction). Microsoft is taking Silverlight in a very different direction to where the likes of Google are heading with their Apps – Google is putting its money on a standards approach, leveraging the promise of HTML 5.0. While there are some truly amazing applications being built within the constraints of the browser and the technology suite it supports (HTML, CSS, JavaScript) there are still other applications that simply can’t be delivered this way and this is where Silverlight comes in. So how has Silverlight evolved and what does this tell us about where it could go? Note I have absolutely no inside knowledge about the realities of Microsoft’s plans, this is all from my own observations.

So over time the dependence on the browser is diminishing and the features of Silverlight and WPF are converging. Somewhat ironic that this model of writing .NET code that can run anywhere is exactly the same road that Java followed with the cross platform Java Runtime – except I guess Microsoft can take it a step further by offering many languages for many platforms.