Dead can mean different things. Often it just means dead-end technology in the sense that MS does not intend to develop the technology further. Since MS have a

Dead can mean different things. Often it just means dead-end technology in the sense that MS does not intend to develop the technology further. Since MS have a strong focus on backwards compatibility, dead-end technologies often can keep running a very long time. VB6 for example is clearly a dead-end technology, but nobody prevents you from running and even developing VB6 apps. Silverlight has been a dead-end technology for some time, but it will continue to be supported in Internet Explorer in "legacy mode". You can still run ActiveX-controls in IE (in legacy mode), so expect to be able to run Silverlight apps for the foreseeable future.