While there have been many exciting advances in the world of web page development, the promise held out by HTML5 to create a uniform development language and cut down on expensive custom programming could be one of the best steps forward. But what does this mean for Microsoft’s Silverlight?
Like many of their innovations, Microsoft has built on the success of Adobe Flash to deliver self-contained interactivity and multimedia with the release of Silverlight. Silverlight allows the creation of retained mode graphics to build interfaces, menus, play sound bits and even video. Many modern websites rely on such technology to create intuitive navigation or slick customized interfaces.
But this comes at a price, as this custom programming is not as easy as basic HTML that the web uses and maintenance of these interfaces can be more time consuming as well. Basically Java, Silverlight, and Flash all try to fill gaps that the current HTML standards do not support. This is where HTML5 comes in. HTML5 is currently being developed to provide this type of functionality in the native language of the internet, HTML. Does this mean it will replace Silverlight? What are the pros and cons of HTML5 and Silverlight?
The two cannot be easily compared because HTML5 intends to do a whole slew of things that Silverlight does not do. Silverlight actually hinders SEO optimized content development since search engines basically cannot read Silverlight code. This is something that HTML5 is taking huge steps to enhance. HTML5 websites will be more semantic than anything out there right now. That means web crawlers for search engines will be able to discern what part of a site is an advertisement, what part is a blog post, or a new page of an article without needing any human perception. This will be a huge step forward in filtering out search engine results and building SEO optimized content.
This is perhaps the biggest short coming of Silverlight. SEO is what drives internet marketing and advertising. Without it adopting Silverlight means you are putting a lot of your content off the radar as far as search engines are concerned. And what else matters for a business that has a website? They need customers to see it. While its true that Silverlight web pages will be able to add content in HTML in order to make it visible, this means doubling up work and not fully benefiting from the Silverlight development time and costs.
But on the other hand, Silverlight is here now. HTML5 has been continually pushed back. While the web hypertext application technology working group currently states it will be ready in late 2010, this does not mean sites will be ready to use them at that time. It may take years for HTML5 to become fully implemented. In the meantime, Silverlight’s shortcomings are better than nothing.
HTML5 will deliver much of the same ability as Silverlight, plus the very important semantic context that will be vital for the next generation of search engines. If Silverlight, Java and Flash want to stay around, they will have to make up for their costs and shortcomings that HTML5 boasts to remediate. HTML5 will not mean the end of all custom web development, but it will be a step in a direction of ‘behind the scenes’ uniformity for the web. The full integration of HTML5 will be something to watch closely in the coming years.
Steve Nutt says
My guess is the Microsoft crowd will go the Silverlight route and the rest will go the HTML 5 route. Silverlight is already one step ahead and even when HTML 5 finally arrives, Silverlight will probably build on top of any cool new features that HTML 5 brings to the table. But then again, who knows what will happen in this crazy online world we have today?
ericbl says
HTML5 is certainly impressive, but I completely disagree with your assertion that “custom programming” in Siliverlight is more difficult than HTML5. The DOM is a pain in the ass and Javascript is terribly error prone because it is not a strongly typed language.
I’ve written both 100% pure Ajax applications with Javascript and 100% Silverlight applications. Silverligtht is easier. It’s also more capable than HTML5.
Dave says
I’m a Microsoft architect. For public facing sites, that need SEO, HTML5 is a much better fit. For internal corporate applications, Silverlight is much faster to develop in a .NET framework.
Sahil Kotak says
Of course HTML 5 is much more better and everyone now around the web are shifting to that only.