It's interesting that Microsoft felt the need to put out this post. I think I will be using both HTML5 and Silverlight. Over time I would expect HTML5 to be in every browser making it a good choice for web applications. Silverlight is perfect for me when I wish to port WPF applications to run in the browser and cross-platform. The work involved would be much less than that of converting to HTML5.

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To be frank I don't see yet how HTML 5 could harm Silverlight in the next ? years ... As you said Mike, it is a four versions old, stable, used by millions and touching a growing number of different environments. Knowing how Microsoft is crazy about one of its favourite babies, Silverlight is not going to give space away for another one so soon ...

The thing is that the 'HTML5 lobby group' aka Apple and Google, have a lot to gain by denegrating Silverlight and Flash. iOS doesn't support it and Google's core strength has been by commoditizing the web with its thousands of javascript programmers.

Silverlight (and Flash) presents real value to application developers, they way I look at it, but is a bit difficult to quantify is that it's not about "Rich Web", Silverlight is more about "Thin Client".

But that's just me.

I think microsoft should concentrate on reducing the load time of any silverlight web app.. lets not cnsider for now the ppl who are actually familier with silverlight as they will never leave using it, but concentrate at the sector where ppl worry if it will really work for them.. ?? we know ofcourse it will but microsoft needs to gain thr trust too..

MY impression of it was that Microsoft is saying we are going to move to HTML 5 and you can use SL for now, but you should plan in future on just using for some media pieces in an otherwise HTML 5 world.  It was not the sort of thing I wanted to read.  I was hoping that somehow there would be a bridge and you could continue to write SL and maybe it could be compiled into HTML 5 somehow.  I was hoping to hear all kinds of new platform support.  Like Droid for instance.

Now I see HTML5 as the Borg.  But then, I'm a pessimist.

Dont forget about Silverlight and building applications for the mobile platform... In 6months there will be a ton of silverlight devs. Html5 is a great idea.. But so was SQL, java,and cross platform issues are never ending. Silverlight is not perfect but it's a lot less wrong than html5  

It certainly was an interesting post that was widely misinterpreted as being a "Silverlight is better than HTML5" story - a pity because while there are scenarios they could both solve, Silverlight can go places HTML currently can't.

What we need more of is discussions around when Silverlight should be considered over HTML - some would say never but  generally because they don't  understand what Silverligh is all about - in this light I wrote, andrewtokeley.net/.../when-should-you-use-silverlight.aspx

We changed horses midstream from HTML/Java to Silverlight, and are soon to release a rather robust enterprise project management application. With Silverlight, we can accomplish real time cross-project resource leveling. With HTML/Java it was horribly slow, and realistically useless with large projects and large resource pools. We wanted to avoid the user clicking a "recalculate schedule"  button every time they made changes. With Silverlight scheduling is now instantaneous. Simple as that ---  Silverlight solved a performance problem that likely won't be solved even with HTML5, even if we waited until 2022 (see the quote below from Wikipedia). In fact, I would suspect slower performance as most "standards" become so bloated from so many cooks in the kitchen.

"Ian Hickson, editor of the HTML5 specification, expects the specification to reach the Candidate Recommendation stage during 2012. The criteria for the specification becoming a W3C Recommendation is “two 100% complete and fully interoperable implementations”.  In an interview with TechRepublic, Hickson guessed that this would occur in the year 2022 or later.  However, many parts of the specification are stable and may be implemented in products (sooner)".

I hope you're right, Mike.

I think Microsoft's actions will continue to speak louder than words, though.  Unfortunately it's not enough to do releases of a technology.  That technology has to be actively supported and, more importantly, used in a meaningful way, otherwise it's at grave risk of being killed off.  This is how things have gone in the past, anyway.  Is there really the internal commitment and support?  It's hard to tell from the outside.

I hope Microsoft embraces html5 and instead of 'us vs. them' - that instead Microsoft takes a 'yes, we will it plus more' mentality.

If I was Microsoft, I'd get a team on html5 yesterday and start working on tooling as well as a vision into the future of using it.

I don't find this at all effecting Silverlight.  Apples to oranges as far as I'm concerned.