Web Development News & Articles

Silverlight was Microsoft's answer to Adobe Flash, an application framework with which to build rich internet applications. It was launched in April 2007 to much fanfare, albeit mainly from Microsoft. Version 5 brought GPU accelerated video decoding and 64-bit support in December of last year. It also brought the conclusion of the Silverlight story, as this version is set to be the final release. Silverlight is no more. Or so people have been speculating, as there has yet to be any official word from Microsoft. Its lifespan might be prolonged as a Windows Phone platform, but it seems likely it will cease to exist as a browser plugin.

However this article is not about SIlverlight per se, but rather its somewhat fractured relationship with SharePoint. If we have really seen the final installment of Silverlight, what does that mean for its use with SharePoint in the future? Let’s start by seeing how it is used today.

The web server market has been stable for ages. Year after year, open source darling Apache HTTP server takes first place by an impressive margin and Microsoft’s Internet Information Server (IIS) takes the silver. Well, it looks like things are changing.

Launching a new website is one part of a process of continually refining and improving your digital offering.

Compuware released the results of its Black Friday to Cyber Monday research and offers practical tips to help online retailers maximize the remainder of the holiday shopping season.

As widely discussed last month, Flash has already been squeezed out of the front end of the mobile experience. Now here comes Silverlight to try to fix its place among developers' favorite framework tools, but will its place at the front of sites be relevant for long?

Let’s hope they have an excellent change management team at Adobe. This month they have slashed 750 full-time positions, killed the mobile version of Adobe Flash Player, acquired an Internet video advertising company and changed strategic direction to focus on digital media and marketing, and it’s just the middle of the month. Now, they’ve decided to donate the Adobe Flex Software Development Kit (SDK) and BlazeDS to the Apache Software Foundation.

The open source web CMS built on Microsoft ASP.NET, Umbraco, is making some changes in how it handles content. Changes many developers will like.

Acquia, the commercial open source software company, announces the launch of Acquia U, a program to train and place Drupal developers and designers.

Less than 30 days after the company’s CEO was fired, Yahoo Inc. launched an HTML5 development toolkit (Cocktails) with support for Node.js, JavaScript and CSS3, and blow-your-socks-off social integration apps for mobile devices including its content-rich digital news app called Livestand for the iPad.

But the turmoil rages on at Yahoo as the second-largest shareholder (Third Point LLC) went public on Friday, with an open letter to Yahoo’s board over “deep concerns” in the fiscal direction of the company, and calling for the resignation of co-founder Jerry Yang. 

Flying under the radar, Microsoft developers submitted a Samba patch in early October and now the Samba team publicly thanks them.

Characterizing it as a “Fall Sweep,” Google said it is shuttering Google Buzz, the controversial social networking service and application program interface (API) toolset that works with Gmail, and focus instead on Google+.

Open source web server NGINX is growing up and ready to take on the enterprise. NGINX announced that it has received new investment dollars, is planning a commercial division and a new enterprise scale platform. Open source web server Apache may not be sitting comfortably much longer if NGINX has its way.

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is holding its first ever conference in November. If you're interested in the latest news on HTML5 and the open web platform, mark your calendars and book it to Seattle.

Out of Northern Ireland, JamPot will be attending the HTML5 Mobile App Workshop in Los Angeles next week to show off its new all-mobile AppBuilder.

 Everyone's favorite developer-tool company Adobe is looking firmly forward with its latest version of Flash, packing in high-quality communications, multimedia and 3D gaming-focused features for all devices.