A glimpse into the future of Silverlight

In his Silverlight Firestarter 2010 Keynote, Scott Guthrie gives us a glimpse at Silverlight's future : Silverlight 5.
The first message he delivers is that Microsoft will continue to invest in Silverlight, and WPF, and aslo HTML5 . This definitely should put the final nail into the coffin of the PDC 2010 buzz that Microsoft was abandoning Silverlight for HTML5. Since this debate started, a lot of people have given their opinion about this, and some have tried to explain that this debate made no sense. The message here is clearly stated by no one less than the Corporate Vice President of Microsoft's .NET Developer Platform : Microsoft wants to give developers the choice of the technology they are going to use, to provide the richest possible user experience.
That said, Scott Guthrie presents the new features of this new Silverlight release, in terms of media, and application features.

Media

• Hardware HD decoding : use your GPU
• Trickplay : play videos faster without distortion
• Power management features : save your battery
• Remove control support : control your videos from your couch
• IIS Media Services 4.0 : live stream your videos for free and watch them onWP7, iPhone or iPad
• Soon to come IIS Media Services in Azure : your streaming content in the cloud

 

Application

• Data binding
  • Debugging : breakpoint your databinding expression (finally........)
  • Markup extensions for MVVM : getting closer to WPF
  • Implicit data templates : templating a given type throughout all the application
  • Ancestor relative source binding : also coming from WPF
  • Binding in style setters : again from WPF
  • DataContextChanged event : and again
• WCF & RIA Services
  • WS-Trust support : secure your applications
  • Low-latency networking : getting closer to real-time
  • MVVM friendly Datasource : datasource as view model
  • End to end support for complex types : transfer your complex types from server to client seamlessly
  • Windows Azure support : expose Azure data structure as RIA Services
• Text and printing
  • Text clarity
  • Multicolumn text flow
  • Character tracking and leading
  • Full OpenType support
  • Vector PostScript printing : programmatically build a print document
• Graphics (amazing demo around 50' of the keynote)
  • Immediate mode graphics API : talk directly with your GPU
  • GPU Accelerated 3D
  • Fluid layout transitions
• Out of browser
  • Multiple Windows support : use child windows in your app
  • P/Invoke : call unmanaged and Win32 APIs
  • Enterprise group policy support : secure your application at the enterprise level / open the sandbox
• Tools
  • Expression Blend 4
  • Automated UI testing
  • Profiling support
• Performances
  • Faster startup
  • Hardware acceleration for IE9
  • 64 bits

Silverlight has gone a long way since I started playing with version 1.1 a few years ago for a Valtech RIA lab. Silverlight 5 should be available in beta the first half of 2011 and the release should be shipped at the end of 2011.
As we can see, Microsoft is putting a lot of efforts in Silverlight, and HTML5 is far from being ready. They are definitely trying to bring WPF and Silverlight closer. I have been doing a lot of WPF in the past two years, and sometimes I forget how limited Silverlight is (or was) compared to WPF. I am actually glad to see some of the cool WPF features being included in Silverlight. That's why I think we are going to see more of Silverlight in a near future.
Look how cool the demos in this presentation are. Of course they are demos, of course their purpose is to be impressive, of course it's never that easy in real life. But doors are opening now, so don't forget to take a look inside the Silverlight room if you don't want to miss something.