Is Microsoft Turning Off the Silverlight?

ZDnet's Mary Jo Foley has an interesting news tidbit: Microsoft seems to be downplaying the original goals for its Silverlight platform, which were to take on Adobe's Flash as a pervasive plug-in for rich media applications. SilverLight is part of the toolset developers use to build Windows Phone 7 apps, and Microsoft says it'll be useful for some other specialized applications. But when it comes to making Web sites fancier, the company seems to be turning its attention to HTML5 standards rather than its own proprietary creations.

SilverLight wasn't without its attractions-waitaminnit, it's probably premature to be referring to it in the past tense-but I suspect most third-party observers who aren't developers with an investment in SilverLight will approve of the idea of Microsoft putting most of its eggs in the HTML5 basket. The Web's going to be a better place once every browser supports all animation, video, and interactivity in the same fashion without the use of multiple plugins. And Internet Explorer 9′s serious HTML5 support is both better for consumers and better for Microsoft's continuing relevance than any future version of SilverLight could be.

This story, "Is Microsoft Turning Off the Silverlight?" was originally published by Technologizer.