Silverlight replacement for Intranet Applications?

Question

I currently develop a handful of Silverlight Applications that are hosted on the company intranet. It is my understanding that Silverlight is basically dead, so I was wondering if anyone knew of a good alternative to use for future applications. I have done some research , and I see that Microsoft is recommending to move to WinRT stuff for desktop applications , but I can't find anything about apps that are supposed to be hosted in a browser, like I am doing with Silverlight now. Should I just switch over to using ASP.NET / HTML / CSS ?

Answer 1

The recommended approach would be to use HTML5. The Metro version of IE 10 doesn't support plugins, so Silverlight will not work there. However, the desktop version of IE 10 still has plugin support, so your Silverlight apps are still supported in Windows 8 to a certain degree.

Silverlight is no longer being advanced by Microsoft, but will still be around for a while (ie all browsers will not drop support in the near future). Given that you are working on intranet apps, you probably have an opportunity to control the environment to a degree so that the Silverlight apps are still accessible. However, it is probably wise to move to HTML5 for new development and also think about a long-term migration strategy for existing apps if needed.

Answer 2

I've talked to some folks around the office, and it seems that their approach is to just convert their Silverlight apps into WPF apps and use ClickOnce for the deployment. The advantage here is a relatively easy and clean port (compared to HTML/CSS/javaScript) and we still get the benefit of existing code / look / feel.

These apps are all internal as well, so we don't have platform problems or browser issues to worry about.