At the Silverlight Firestarter event two days ago, Microsoft announced a new version of its cross-platform runtime and development platform, Silverlight. The new version, dubbed Silverlight 5, will see a first public beta release in the second quarter of 2011, with a final release to follow before the end of next year.
Silverlight 5 will focus on better, more interactive media experiences for Microsoft’s suite of business application; Redmond’s giant wants to offer a technology that will help developers create great user experiences. While we don’t know about developers’ support for the platform, it’s interesting that the new version of Silverlight will introduce support iOS devices. At the event in Redmond, Microsoft demoed the new Silverlight on an iPad, and confirmed that during 2011 they’ll roll out support for iOS and Windows Phone 7.
Good luck with the HTML5 and Flash competition, Microsoft.
