With the shift from proprietary technologies to web development standards such as HTML5, many companies are beginning to change their strategies ahead of the curve. This week reports have surfaced which indicate that Microsoft may be getting ready to end development of its Silverlight multimedia platform so it can more fully focus on HTML5.
Silverlight has often been seen as Microsoft’s own version of Flash. There are developer tools, plugins and advanced features for Silverlight including streaming music, but the technology just didn’t take off like Microsoft had hoped, and Flash remained the leader in browser-based multimedia–until now.