Makiwa

The two PDC2008 keynotes were quite interesting. Sure, the first one about Windows Azure and cloud computing was a little dry, and while is quite hard to wow audiences with architecture, infrastructure and backend services, they could have done a much better job by regularly demonstrating the value to developers and end users (See Apple’s keynotes). However, the second keynote was a lot more exciting. Amongst other things, we got tastes of Windows 7, Office v.Next on the web, and all sorts of Live Mesh goodness.

But for me the highlight of the keynotes was when Scott Guthrie mentioned that Silverlight is jumping “outside the browser”

“Next year we will also then be shipping a major new release of Silverlight, which includes a bunch of new runtime features.

“We’ve already announced support for H.264 media, and you’ll see a lot more media features being announced in the months ahead. In a few minutes you’ll learn about how you can actually run Silverlight both inside the browser, and now, OUTSIDE the browser. (applause)

“Also, as part of the next Silverlight release we’re going to be adding much richer graphics support as well as much improved data support.”

Of course, “in a few minutes” probably referred to a session on Silverlight, and as I wasn’t at the conference I’m left wondering about the details for now. Silverlight outside the browser really would deliver on Silverlight’s former name “WPF Everywhere”. It pits Silverlight against Adobe AIR and really ups the ante in the Rich Internet Application (RIA) space.

Of course, for this announcement to even mean anything, “outside the browser” must mean on both the Windows and the Mac desktop (and yes, the Linux desktops too although that’s technically ‘Moonlight’). After all, we already have Silverlight outside the browser on Windows – it’s full on WPF. So if Silverlight itself is jumping outside the browser I can only assume that this is the the long-awaited move to get the .NET Framework running on the Mac!

If this proves to be the case, it will have profound implications for technology choice on RIA projects, especially as offline capability starts to become more important. Silverlight will finally be a player – not just a media player.