The Age of Plugins
Web browsers in 2010 are fundamentally limited. To deliver vector graphics, video playback, and complex animations, developers must rely on third-party browser plugins: Adobe Flash, Microsoft Silverlight, or Java Applets.
With the release of Silverlight 4 in March 2010, Microsoft is making a major play for the Rich Internet Application (RIA) enterprise market. At the same time, native web standards are evolving rapidly.
Silverlight 4: Enterprise Powerhouse
Silverlight 4 introduces impressive capabilities that web applications can only dream of:
- ◆Webcam and Microphone Access: Native capture support.
- ◆Out-of-Browser (OOB) Execution: Installing web apps to the user's desktop with full trust permissions.
- ◆WCF Rich Internet Applications (RIA) Services: Simplifying multi-tier application architecture with direct binding between .NET backend entities and Silverlight clients.
- ◆Printing Support: Native enterprise reporting capabilities.
For developers inside the Microsoft ecosystem, Silverlight offers compile-time safety, C# execution in the browser via a lightweight CLR, and rich UI design using XAML.
The Emerging Challenger: HTML5
While Silverlight is powerful, HTML5 is gaining massive support from browser vendors (Mozilla, Google, Apple) who want to eliminate plugins entirely.
Key HTML5 features emerging in 2010:
- 1.The `<canvas>` tag: Allowing dynamic, scriptable rendering of 2D shapes and graphics via JavaScript.
- 2.Native Video and Audio:
<video>and<audio>tags that render directly without plugins. - 3.CSS3: Adding border-radius, gradients, and simple animations natively to CSS.
The Architectural Choice
If you are building an internal enterprise dashboard, reporting tool, or intranet app in 2010, Silverlight 4 is highly productive. But for public web applications, mobile compatibility is becoming a major risk. Silverlight does not run on smartphones, whereas HTML5 represents the open future of the web.