It is said that the unreleased HTML 5 and CSS 3 can produce the effects and graphics which can be done in Microsoft Silverlight. It thats true then can I skip learning Silverlight and wait for HTML5 and CSS 3?
+4
A:
Silverlight is a tool for developing web applications (RIA - Rich Internet Applications).
Pure HTML+ CSS (even if it is HTML5 and CSS3) will only produce web sites unless you put some code/framework behind them.
Therefore while visually they might look similar they are two completely separate things behind the scenes.
ChrisF
2010-07-22 14:33:28
A:
It's like comparing apples and oranges, but one thing is makes HTML 5 + CSS better then Silverlight: It runs on every modern browser, mobile device, etc...
Hippo
2010-07-22 14:37:45
-1: HTML5 / CSS3 support is still sketchy at best. MS still has not released a full browser that supports it, and of the browsers that do support it, none is standard yet. The specification is still in draft status. Silverlight, however, does have a plug-in build for the major browser types: WebKit, Mozilla, IE, Opera.
Joel Etherton
2010-07-22 14:41:38
But I am still waiting for full functional silverlight for Linux, iPhone, Android.....
Hippo
2010-07-22 14:43:53
@Hippo - no argument there.
Joel Etherton
2010-07-22 14:49:53
A:
You don't need to wait for HTML5 and CSS 3, they are here today and can be used right now. Web standards aren't 'released' in the way software is, they are standardisations of existing browser implementations.
What front-end technology you choose very much depends on project requirements, some things that are easy in Flash/Silverlight are just not possible yet or really hard to achieve using web standards (think Canvas and WebGL).
There is no definitive answer for this, and there may never be.
roryf
2010-07-22 14:38:51
A:
HTML5 + CSS + JavaScript, you mean? The future of RIAs does look bright given the promise of these technologies; however, they do not likely represent a replacement for Silverlight right now. If you need to build a complex web app now, Silverlight can do it, and even though some browsers like Chrome, Safari and Firefox have already implemented parts of HTML5, the support is too jagged to allow you to build a stable cross-browser application.
Silverlight, however, should behave the same way in all browser on all OSes.
Adam Crossland
2010-07-22 14:38:54
To be fair to people lumping a bunch of stuff into HTML5, a lot if the HTML5 spec is about JavaScript (or at least the DOM).
Paul D. Waite
2010-07-22 19:20:43
A:
if you use silverlight (and/or flash) only for a nice layout and some stuff like animations, yuo don't need it - this can be done with html5/css3 only.
but note that silverlight (and/or flash) give your a lot of possibilities to write applications witch can do a lot more stuff.
oezi
2010-07-22 14:39:10
A:
The only reason I prefere to use Flash/Silverlight over HTML+JS+CSS is, they run pretty much similarly on all platforms and they are independent of browser's code, although html has some standard but coders dont have any standard, similar functionality needs different javascript in different browser, more over rendering html elements is also different on different browser so does printing.
No matter HTML5 or HTML 10 coming in future will attract developers, but not implementing correct standards by OS and browsers will always make them weak enough.
Akash Kava
2010-07-22 14:44:52