I know they are many questions about Silverlight vs HTML5.(ex: Which is the future of web development: HTML5 or Silverlight(or other RIA framework)?) However those questions are nearly more than 1 year old and informations in them are out-of-date. (As you may know, HTML5 at last call for comments, near finished in 2012.)
My company plan to develop new LOB application that tend to use by user across country. Our developers (include me) have a great experience with WPF and Silverlight, however I’m very confident that we can quickly gain knowledge of ASP.NET. Anyway this new application tend to use across the country so there are 2 options we’re considering, Silverlight and ASP.NET.
We’re also strive by our management to think about easy-to-install and long-term support of the application because it tend to use by many branches (currently customer has more than 100 branches) and at least it will use for a decade.
After I read about Silverlight vs HTML5 from internet, I think Silverlight’s future has shift to Windows Phone 7, not cross-platform web application. So, my question are:
- Can HTML5 compete to Silverlight as UI layer for LOB application? (I’m sure that I will not play movie or music or use a Walt-Disney animation in my application)
- What’re pros and cons if I choose Silverlight and ASP.NET?
Given that your team is already very experienced with with Silverlight, the project is intranet-based, and I’m assuming that if you are SL experts your company has the infrastructure (including browser support) for SL, I would go that route. I don’t see anything in what you have written that justifies a business case for the HTML5 learning curve or rolling out browsers to your customers that support HTML5. You have a lot of pros for using Silverlight / ASP.NET, I don’t see any concerning cons. That’s how I would make that business decision.