Microsoft finally releases an alternative for Silverlight

Microsoft Silverlight will reach the end of support on October 12, 2021. Even though Silverlight is still supported by Microsoft, active development was stopped several years ago. Right now, Silverlight is only supported on Internet Explorer 11.

Microsoft Silverlight will reach the end of support on October 12, 2021. Even though Silverlight is still supported by Microsoft, active development was stopped several years ago. Right now, Silverlight is only supported on Internet Explorer 11. Silverlight enabled developers to build both desktop and web applications. Microsoft recommends desktop app developers to use UWP or WPF on .NET Core for Silverlight. For web developers, Microsoft has now released a new framework called Blazor WebAssembly. This is not a preview release, Blazor is now production ready.

Blazor allows web developers to create web applications using C# instead of JavaScript. They can also reuse .NET Silverlight code. Also, Blazor apps are made of reusable web UI components implemented using C#, HTML, and CSS. Since both client and server code is written in C#, developers can share code and libraries.

Blazor is a feature of ASP.NET, the popular web development framework that extends the .NET developer platform with tools and libraries for building web apps.

Blazor offers the following advantages over Silverlight:

• Blazor uses open web standards without plugins or code transpilation.

• Blazor works in all modern web browsers, including mobile browsers.

• Blazor apps can use existing .NET libraries, thanks to .NET Standard–a formal specification of .NET APIs that are common across all .NET implementations.

• Your C# code can easily call JavaScript APIs and libraries. You can continue to use the large ecosystem of JavaScript libraries that exist for client side UI while writing your logic in C#.

• Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code provide a great Blazor development experience on Windows, Linux, and macOS.

• .NET is free, and that includes Blazor. There are no fees or licensing costs, including for commercial use.