Are WPF and Silverlight Dead?

By CentralDogma
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CentralDogma

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With the recent preview of Windows 8, Microsoft has been championing a new development platform: HTML5 and Javascript. Many developers are happy to hear new technologies being supported on Windows, but some, particularly WPF and Silverlight developers are feeling left out. Some of them have even started a public plea to Microsoft. Their justification being:

  • In all of the officially released statements concerning the upcoming Windows 8, there has not been one, not one, prepared statement that even mentions the future role of .NET, WPF, or Silverlight in Windows 8, contrary to all of the statements concerning the integral role the new HTML5 platform will play. Only after Windows President S. Sinofsky was asked what role Silverlight played in Windows 8, was it stated that it would continue to run in IE and on the desktop. Clearly then, our concern is not that these terrific platforms will be terminated, but that they might be left to ?dry on the vine.?
  • In an officially released video dubbed ?Building Windows 8? by Jensen Harris, Director of PM of Windows User Experience, Jensen clearly portrays a dichotomy of apps that will exist on Windows 8: 1) Apps that are repeatedly called ?Windows 8 Apps,? which he speaks of as ?Web-connected and web-powered apps built using HTML5 and JavaScript,? and 2) ?Existing windows apps.? WPF / Silverlight apps seem to be precluded from the ?Windows 8 Apps.? We do not want Silvelight and WPF apps to be relegated to a ?classic? (if even a ?legacy?) category, while we hope to see a paradigm of ?Windows 8 HTML5 Apps? exist alongside of ?Windows 8 WPF/Silverlight Apps,? both of which will constitute the front-facing, cool new look of Windows 8.
  • The MIX 2011 conference focused almost exclusively on HTML5 technologies, with little focus on Silverlight.
  • A new developer conference called BUILD has been announced in place of what would have been PDC for September (www.buildwindows.com). Again we see no mention whatsoever of WPF, SL, or .NET: ?Go behind the scenes and learn all about the new app model that allows you to create powerful new apps. All while retaining the ability to use your existing apps. Web-connected and web-powered apps built using HTML5 and JavaScript [that] have access to the power of the PC.? While the commitment is made there that .NET apps (?your existing apps?) will not of course be terminated, one is lead to believe that WPF/SL apps do not have a key role to play in the new Windows 8, front-facing model.
  • Perhaps of lesser significance, but the following raises questions: ?When Scott Guthrie, former corporate vice president of the .NET Platform at Microsoft, left the Developer Division [even on the very day of the announcement of this ?new? Windows 8 app ?platform?] to head up a new Windows Azure business unit, I was more than concerned? ? (M. Desmond, The Sinofsky Shuffle, http://visualstudiomagazine.com/articles/2011/06/01/pcfra_guthrie.aspx).

Most of their justification seems based on circumstantial evidence. A lack of communication from Microsoft on WPF and Silverlight does not necessarily mean anything bad for the technologies. Maybe Microsoft wants to accentuate the new technologies and detail how their current technologies will fit into Windows 8 at a later date.

But, let?s investigate a bit more.

September of last year former Microsoft Silverlight Product Manager Scott Barnes made a series of posts on twitter on the future of WPF and Silverlight:

So.. after a week in Microsoft HQ etc.. i have a lot of inside info that just basically puts into question the future of #Silverlight #wpf

Right now there?s a faction war inside Microsoft over HTML5 vs Silverlight. oh and WPF is dead.. i mean..it kind of was..but now.. funeral.

HTML5 is the replacement for WPF.. IE team want to fork the HTML5 spec by bolting on custom windows APi?s via JS/HTML5

He goes on to explain:

Silverlight and WPF are something in which a lot of teams internally just aren?t fans of and has a variety of reasons attached but the main one that used to **** the Window?s teams off was that the notion that the CLR should be cross-platform is in many ways an attack point on Windows adoption ?.

What I am seeing today is that WPF has lost the support it could have had from the start in favor of Silverlight. This in turn has put Silverlight out in front as the preferred UX option in the .NET stack but the problem with Silverlight is that it has a limited amount of features that most dev?s want and furthermore it?s still being plagued with issues around ubiquity?.

On one hand, it?s pretty widely known within the company that WPF has been ear marked for death for quite some time and had it not had such prolific ubiquity or ISV?s that build software used by many on it (Autodesk 3DSMAX, Visual Studio, Expression etc) it would have been taken out back and shot long ago. It simply is too hard to kill, so the only way Microsoft to date knows how is to either spend majority of its focus on convincing developers that Silverlight is the better option and/or reduce the noise around WPF altogether hoping that others will pick up on the subtle tones that it?s better you don?t adopt but under the Smokey hazed veil of the a-typical response ?It depends?.

WPF has no investment, it?s kept together by a skeleton crew and its evangelism / community efforts have little to no funding attached to it. It?s dead, the question now is how is the corpse going to be buried and no amount of cheer leading will change that outcome in the near future?.

What if, you could take JavaScript and make it faster and easier to develop against whilst at the same time leveraging a basic UX language like HTML5/CSS and in turn create desktop applications? It can be done and if you were to bake in specific API?s within Internet Explorer itself, it can also provide you capabilities to ensure that Windows is a chosen platform of the future especially given it has proven time and time again that it can resell itself in rapid succession (ie: see Windows 7 sales)?.

HTML5 and Silverlight can?t co-exist within the company and no matter how many blog posts on ?It depends? you produce, customers want answers that are direct and to the point ? even if they don?t agree with you, but knowing where you stand is important.

Given the statements coming out of Microsoft recently, it certainly looks like Scott Barnes was correct in his assessment of Microsoft?s infighting. And, in the end, HTML5 and Javascript won out as Microsoft?s new vision of the future.

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still1

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WPF.... yes its least popular and not many use WPF.... but Silverlight is far from dead.... I saw demand for silverlight a lot....

even my client use silverlight a lot.

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CentralDogma

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Why talk about existing technologies in when you have new stuff to show off.

That could certainly be the case. D9 might not be the place for touting the development side of your system.

But, you would expect to find some mention in an official press release. None. How about the BUILD Conference website (which replaced PDC as Microsoft's developer conference)? Not once are WPF or Silverlight mentioned.

And to have the former PM of Silverlight come out and say Microsoft will "take JavaScript and make it faster and easier to develop against whilst at the same time leveraging a basic UX language like HTML5/CSS and in turn create desktop applications" and kill off WPF and Silverlight 9 months before this announcement? That's pretty damning.

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+LogicalApex MVC

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Hopefully this isn't the case for Silverlight.

Microsoft forking HTML5 to morph that into a replacement is a future I don't want to see. We will be thrown back into the 90s where HTML and CSS had all levels of propietary extensions. It will work against the current goal in Web Development of standards compliance and multi-browser support.

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libertas83

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Hopefully this isn't the case for Silverlight.

Microsoft forking HTML5 to morph that into a replacement is a future I don't want to see. We will be thrown back into the 90s where HTML and CSS had all levels of propietary extensions. It will work against the current goal in Web Development of standards compliance and multi-browser support.

Not necesarily, these are applications not web sites so it can be done separately. It may even make it easier in the sense that you can share more of your code cross-platform and then have specific platform enabled features that light up for each.

I do think it is more likely they will have better bridges between .NET and HTML5 and JavaScript which has been the trend over the last year anyway. That way you can do HTML5/JavaScript for the front-end and back-end be .NET based. Plus for full Windows apps you still will have Win32 APIs and native access. They won't get rid of that in full blown desktop mode.

We can only wait until Microsoft officially anounces this stuff because it is confusing a bit.

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rfirth

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Silverlight and WPF won't be going anywhere - but XAML might. Sounds like they might merge XAML and HTML5. Could be interesting.

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DeadEndAccount

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My understanding was that Silverlight would no longer be pitched as a competitor to Flash (Silverlight now competes against Adobe Air) in favour of being some what of a framework that is primarily on the Windows Phone 7 device - HTML5 in other words would be geared as a competitor to Flash and Silverlight as the framework for Windows Phone 7 development.

As someone else noted, the D9 isn't a development conference - start to be concerned when the development conferences provide little or no detail as to the future direction of Windows 8, WPF, .NET and Silverlight.

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Aethec

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The worst possible case is that they might merge WPF and Silverlight while forgetting some things along the way.

The best would be to leave WPF alone, continue developing it and add new features.

.NET is not going to fade away ; Microsoft is using it as its cross-platform (well, cross-Microsoft-platforms) tool, and it is said they have a working prototype of Midori, their .NET operating system (which is rumored to be faster than NT).

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svnO.o

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Silverlight-developers a real p****d: http://forums.silverlight.net/forums/p/230502/562113.aspx.

Actually this lack of information on .NET and the focus on HTML+JS annoys me. Should have never started learning .NET apparently as Microsoft is abbandoning it as the major framework?

I've actually wanted to get more into programming with .NET and such as I come originally from a VB6/web development background then moved onto other languages (Java, C/C++, VB.NET, C#). I've also noticed that things are kind of "jumbled" in that Microsoft has all these technologies (Silverlight, XNA, WPF, etc.) but they don't seem to be clearly tied together and unified like they haven't quite figured everything out yet. I'd like to get back into desktop programming but the .NET platform is rapidly shifting so I think I'd like to see where Windows 8 takes us on the development-side before investing into Microsoft's development frameworks/platform. Seems like a waste to learn some of the current ways of doing things since it looks like by the time Windows 8 comes out things may be quite different. I'm also betting on the fact that Windows 8 will be a developer gold mine (due to compatibility / ARM support / taking market share in tablet, phone, and small-form factor computing) so I think I'll wait a bit.

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Grand Master

Fred Derf Veteran

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WPF?: What is this I don't even

Silverlight still has some legs for corporate intranet use but it irks me all the same when I see it implemented.

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BajiRav

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WPF?: What is this I don't even

Silverlight still has some legs for corporate intranet use but it irks me all the same when I see it implemented.

What did WPF say to Silverlight?

A: I AM YOUR FATHER!

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somethingelse

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Damn! I just got into WPF, and it's so cool! But it has a crap name, they should use the silverlight brand for it or something, they didn't market it well. But they arent making any effort on windows forms :( that's probably dead.

I did notice that that leaked screenshot of w8's history vault feature the ui was WPF so maybe there's hope for it I don't see them killing silverlight since wp7 uses it. But then again I didnt think they'd replace the start menu with wp7's home screen.

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SirEvan

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WPF?: What is this I don't even

Silverlight still has some legs for corporate intranet use but it irks me all the same when I see it implemented.

You don't even what?

WPF = Windows Presentation Foundation....successor to winforms.

Back on topic, Considering winforms is still being used, and people are just starting to use WPF, I say no...its not going anywhere anytime soon.

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MFH

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@svnO.o:

I was going to start using XNA this summer for a little game project - after I've seen Win8, I abandoned the idea. Back to C++? From now on I'm focusing on cross-platform development, MS seems to have lost touch with the real world?

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georgevella

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Wow, you guys fascinate me. How can you think that MS would abandon WPF or Silverlight? They have invested quite a lot into these technologies, I don't see them going away any time soon.

Speculation: They will probably allow XAML pages into the new shell together with Silverlight. WPF will remain for full UI development.

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somethingelse

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Wow, you guys fascinate me. How can you think that MS would abandon WPF or Silverlight? They have invested quite a lot into these technologies, I don't see them going away any time soon.

Speculation: They will probably allow XAML pages into the new shell together with Silverlight. WPF will remain for full UI development.

They left windows forms to gather dust :( I never even saw any of vista's features getting into winforms without having to use the slightly buggy windows api code pack. They'll probably never give that a decent update again.

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