Microsoft to Developers: Silverlight Remains ‘Strategic’

At issue is how does Silverlight, which is currently in its fourth revision, fit into the scheme of handling media in a world that is increasingly becoming dominated by HTML 5. Stuart Johnston reports.

After telling an interviewer late last week that the role of Silverlight in the scheme of things has “shifted” — thus setting off fears in some observers’ and developers’ minds that the cross-platform, cross-browser streaming media technology is being dead ended — the president of the division that has purview over its future admits that he miscommunicated.

In a move meant to calm the waters and reassure developers that it won’t pull the rug out from underneath them after it has spent 3 B= years convincing them that it is the future platform for streaming media, President of Microsoft’s (NASDAQ: MSFT) Server and Tools Division, Bob Muglia, said in a follow up blog post this week that Silverlight remains “strategic.”

“I said, ‘Our Silverlight strategy and focus going forward has shifted.’ This isn’t a negative statement, but rather, it’s a comment on how the industry has changed and how we’re adapting our Silverlight strategy to take advantage of that,” Muglia’s post said.

Muglia’s interview comments were originally published by the All About Microsoft blog. In his own blog post, Muglia said that the confusion was his fault.

Read the rest at CodeGuru.