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Yes, I would call that fairly substantial considering its underlying architecture is no longer viable -- not because of Microsoft's fault, but as the industry a
by unsignedint 3y ago
Yes, I would call that fairly substantial considering its underlying architecture is no longer viable -- not because of Microsoft's fault, but as the industry as whole moved away from the plugin-based AIR.
Silverlight was somewhat of a unique situation, as it was a platform where it heavily relied on the platform that was phasing out. (And to clarify, that "decade" is the period that Microsoft was committed to support for latest Silverlight 5. Their first version was released in 2007, so it had about 14 years of history.)
As with Java or any other languages, you can still run it if the environment it runs can be resurrected. (I would not connect that to the internet, though)
And many parts of what actually powered Silverlight still thrive in a form of .Net.
I mean where they can support, Microsoft tends to keep its compatibility fairly intact, for instance modern Windows still can run many of the 32-bit binaries from early days. (And you even could do the same for 16-bit apps on a 32-bit platform, not sure if that's still possible, though.)