OpenSilver – a plugin-free, open-source reimplementation of Silverlight

Since it runs in the Browser JS sandbox there will be a lower security footprint than the NPAPI Silverlight plugin. JS libraries can certainly still cause other web security issues but you shouldn’t be able to escape the browser just because you’re running this library.

https://developer.chrome.com/apps/npapi

When I see how absurdly complicated these front-end JS frameworks are it makes me really hope that Blazor can deliver. But for some reason it also feels similar to times in the past where a word for promising tech was never more than a word. But please work, I don’t need or want two routing implementations and an entire MVC stack to manage on the damn client...

Officially it is no longer an experiment.

Otherwise I agree. Blazor will never be what they imagine it will be. And why should the office team migrate to another tech stack. That is wasted money.

Office is React, because of C++.

Office and WinDev teams are the main reason why Longhorn failed, their collaboration with DevDiv wasn't particularly stellar.

They were pretty happy to redo Longhorn ideas using COM instead, then rejuvenating it into what is now UWP, naturally creating an incompatible .NET stack in the process, which might finally be done with when .NET 5 gets released.

Also Office team is so deep into C++ they even maintain their own VC++ branch.

You won't see those guys touching anything .NET beyond the absolutely necessary.

Trust was my biggest objection to it... There was no reasonable/complete Linux implementation available, and at that point Microsoft had never supported a technology (other than office) outside of Windows for more than 2 releases that I could recall.

In general, I really liked the package model, it's close to what I'd hoped Flash would become after Adobe acquisition. I do like React a bit better than Silverlight, but the tech and usability wasn't really bad, just more of a risk aversion for myself.

If MS had created an open-source client implementation that was patent unencumbered that other browsers could have integrated, with open tooling, I think it would have gone better. Can't speak to this implementation. For the Blazor efforts, payload size just feels excessively huge to me, and server-side renders feel as laggy as the original ASP.Net lifecycle round trip.

I'd probably be more inclined to work towards tooling for other languages that have a lighter wasm target (Rust in particular) and either web canvas or something like yew. All of that said, I'm pretty happy with React these days.

If the web kept going down that path, we’d end up with a dozen equivalents of Flash and Silverlight, dooming the web to become a closed hellscape.

I honestly don't know if that's a silverlight issue or implementation problem, but having to work with admin consoles implemented in silverlight in Microsoft product I can say they offer awful experience.

Loading time is terrible, movement between fields is clunky and if you use tab to pass fields your input will be deleted. Left clicks are not a thing. Moving back and forth lose state. Responsive design is not a thing.

I'm waiting so long for it to reach end of life already.

The spinning loading icon for 30s to 60s was fun (big silverlight sites).

"the only issue I had with it was that you had to install yet another software plugin"

yup. I did a lot of WPF/Silverlight work 2008-2012 and I STILL get emails from recruiters (one this week even) asking if I want a job doing that kind of work.