Today Microsoft announced the availability of Silverlight 4.0 (BETA). Tim Heuer has the best Silverlight 4.0 post I can find on the web.
That’s right, we’ve released an early beta of the next version of Silverlight. It’s really amazing to think what the team is accomplishing at the pace they are accomplishing it! Silverlight 3 released just over a year ago and here we are with yet another release full of features that our community has been asking for.
Just to underline that point let me show you just how fast Microsoft is iterating on Silverlight.
Silverlight 1.0 – Released 04/08/08
Silverlight 2.0 – Released 10/14/08
Silverlight 3.0 – Released 07/28/09
Silverlight 4.0 – Released First Half of 2010
That’s a rapid release schedule. Hopefully this means Microsoft is finally realizing just how valuable Silverlight is.
Wait…let me clarify that.
Microsoft already realized Silverlight was pretty valuable but hopefully they are starting to realize Silverlight could very well save their company. The Silverlight plug-in, not Azure, is the only thing Microsoft has that could someday grow into a platform the world uses (and in doing so replace Microsoft’s Windows Monopoly).
(without going too much into my thoughts on Azure’s problems you can get an idea here)
Here’s the thing. Almost no one is developing desktop apps anymore. You have Office Apps, Games, a few Intuit apps and the bargain basement (Software under $20 or custom software originally written a decade or more ago). Other than that everything is moving towards a web model.
Now HTML 5 is great and it will probably do just fine for many websites. But complex websites and web based software is going to need an environment that doesn’t make software developers feel like the tools they’re using are from the 90s.
Silverlight allows Microsoft to leverage Visual Studio and give all those ex-Desktop developers an alternative to HTML and Javascript. An alternative that looks and acts like the tools they’re used to but still gets the job done. In doing that Silverlight gives Microsoft a good shot at keeping those Windows developers “in the fold” as development moves to the web.
Microsoft still has a way to go before Silverlight’s up to retaking the enterprise market. But if they can keep up this pace for a little while longer I think they just might make it happen.
Addendum: I forgot to mention it above but kudos to the Developer relations folks for already having instruction videos for the new features: http://silverlight.net/learn/videos/silverlight-4-beta-videos/