Today, Microsoft announced their latest iteration of their OS -- Windows 8 -- but one thing was eerily missing from the announcement, and support in the product. That missing thing? Silverlight.
In a video post today by Scott Barnes, former Rich Platforms Product Manager at Microsoft for the Silverlight team, talks about how Silverlight is dead in Windows 8. In the video he talks about his history at Microsoft, and how he ended up resigning from the company.
"Silverlight is dead" he says in his video, "Silverlight is %&#ing dead, and I know, because there"s one guy right now whos metrics are to shut Silverlight down as a brand down, most of the team have been split apart and others have left the company altogether." He goes on to point out "there"s a reason Scott Gunthrie wasn"t on stage today."
Barnes goes on to say that "S%# needs to get resolved" and says that HTML5 isn"t the solution to the issue. He believes that everyone is on a sugar high and under Microsoft "mind control" after the BUILD event, and when developers realize what"s going on they"ll be unhappy. Scott also says that "Windows 8 has a lot of work" before it"s ready for release. He urges developers to move on now, or speak up, otherwise risk their work being wasted.
The video can be viewed in it"s entirety below. Developers seem generally happy with their first impressions of Windows 8 at BUILD, however, it"s likely that many will be upset that Silverlight has been killed after they have invested time in it. It"s obvious that Microsoft is moving away from Silverlight, but we"re yet to actually see the company admit that.
Funnily enough, the BUILD keynote this morning? Streamed in Silverlight.