{"id":2365,"date":"2010-03-16T18:26:40","date_gmt":"2010-03-16T17:26:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/2365-microsoft-playing-html-5-standards-game-alongside-silverlight-game.html"},"modified":"2010-03-16T18:26:40","modified_gmt":"2010-03-16T17:26:40","slug":"microsoft-playing-html-5-standards-game-alongside-silverlight-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/2365-microsoft-playing-html-5-standards-game-alongside-silverlight-game.html","title":{"rendered":"Microsoft playing HTML 5 standards game alongside Silverlight game"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019m at Mix10 in Las Vegas where Microsoft has been showing off the latest preview of IE9 \u2013 you can try it <a href=\"http:\/\/ie.microsoft.com\/testdrive\/\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>, provided you have Vista SP2, Windows 2008 or Windows 7.<\/p>\n<p>The two themes are performance, with GPU-accelerated HTML and graphics and a new Javascript engine that compiles code in the background, and standards support. This latter was not a surprise to me, as I\u2019d heard the well-informed Molly Holzschlag praise Microsoft\u2019s commitment to HTML5 at a workshop here on Sunday \u2013 see this <a href=\"http:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/2353-the-two-specifications-of-html-5-0-what-wg-vs-w3c.html\" target=\"_blank\">earlier post<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>During the keynote, we saw IE9 playing a video using the HTML 5 video tag \u2013 no Flash or Silverlight needed. Microsoft also showed that in this instance IE9 performed better than Chrome thanks to better hardware acceleration. Although one should always mistrust one vendor\u2019s demonstration of another vendor\u2019s product, it should not be surprising that Microsoft is able to deliver a browser that is better optimised for Windows.<\/p>\n<p>Video, hardware accelerated graphics, audio element support, fast JavaScript: there is considerable overlap with the features of the Microsoft Silverlight (and Adobe Flash) plug-ins.<\/p>\n<p>The plug-in approach has advantages. It offers consistency across browsers, and enables rapid evolution without the hassles of standards committees. The multimedia features in Silverlight and Flash are well ahead of those in HTML 5 \u2013 Holzschlag nailed this when she described today\u2019s HTML 5 demos as reminiscent of Flash demos a decade ago.<\/p>\n<p>Still, if you can do without the plug-in you end up with cleaner code, removing the awkward transition between what is in HTML and JavaScript, and what is in the plug-in. There is also a better chance that your code will run on Apple\u2019s iPhone and iPad, for example.<\/p>\n<p>The question though: can Microsoft do an equally good job of supporting HTML 5 throughout its platform, as it will do with Silverlight? This is where I\u2019m doubtful. The Visual Studio and Expression tools will continue to drive developers towards Silverlight rather than HTML 5.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s notable that shortly after Microsoft\u2019s IE9 demos at Mix, we saw demos of fun technology like code-name Houston, develop databases in the cloud using just your browser and \u2026 Silverlight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019m at Mix10 in Las Vegas where Microsoft has been showing off the latest preview of IE9 \u2013 you can try it here, provided you have Vista SP2, Windows 2008 or Windows 7. The two themes are performance, with GPU-accelerated HTML and graphics and a new Javascript engine that compiles code in the background, and &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/2365-microsoft-playing-html-5-standards-game-alongside-silverlight-game.html\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Microsoft playing HTML 5 standards game alongside Silverlight game<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44,55,80,94,96,97],"tags":[394,462,586,595,825],"class_list":["post-2365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-internet","category-microsoft","category-software-development","category-visual-studio","category-web-authoring","category-windows","tag-flash","tag-html-5","tag-microsoft","tag-mix","tag-silverlight"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2365"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2365\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}