Edge Drops Support for Silverlight on Windows 10; Don’t Worry IE is Still There
As the web move towards HTML 5, and the browsers have already started supporting the new standards, Microsoft is all up for the change from supporting Active X, Silverlight to dumping them with their brand new EDGE Browser on Windows 10. Silverlight became very popular after it’s launch, but with HTML 5 racing in, lot of companies gave up on it which was a good way to go forward.
Support for ActiveX has been discontinued in Microsoft Edge, and that includes removing support for Silverlight. The reasons for this have been discussed in previous blogs and include the emergence of viable and secure media solutions based on HTML5 extensions. Microsoft continues to support Silverlight, and Silverlight out-of-browser apps can continue to use it. Silverlight will also continue to be supported in Internet Explorer 11, so sites continue to have Silverlight options in Windows 10. At the same time, we encourage companies that are using Silverlight for media to begin the transition to DASH/MSE/CENC/EME based designs and to follow a single, DRM-interoperable encoding work flow enabled by CENC. This represents the most broadly interoperable solution across browsers, platforms, content and devices going forward.
Windows 10 and Microsoft Edge support DASH, MSE, EME and CENC natively, and other major browsers ship implementations of MSE and CENC compliant EME. This support allows developers to build plug-in free web video apps that runs across a huge range of platforms and devices, with each MSE/EME implementation built on top of a different media pipeline and DRM provider.
So the only choice now left is move away from Silverlight to something that all browsers now support. However, its going to take a while for companies to upgrade to HTML 5 if they have been too much dependent on it.
Here are few things you should know though:
- Silverlight out-of-browser apps are supported in Windows 10.
- Windows Phone Developer Dashboard seems to have got rid of Silverlight as well.
- Netflix used a lot of Silverlight.
- Edge still support Flash on Desktop.
