End of the line for Silverlight? I for one would not mind

Developers say Microsoft has "betrayed" them by changing strategy on the Silverlight web technology.

When first announced Silverlight was portrayed as a rival to Flash and key to getting Microsoft software running on many different devices.

Now Microsoft is slowing Silverlight development and turning its attention to web standards such as HTML5.

Silverlight will remain as a way to get apps running on Windows phone 7.

The strategy shift emerged as a result of an interview that Bob Muglia, Microsoft's head of servers and tools division, gave at the company's Professional Developers Conferenc

BBC News - Coders decry Silverlight change

I was so excited when I first started looking at Silverlight 3. "Introducing Silverlight 3" from Microsoft Press is probably one of the few technology books I have read cover to cover. Then I started to play around with it. In short, it stinks. Silverlight 3 can't even touch Flash 3, the interface is terrible and tool is so complex. I think only a .NET developer could get anything much out if and it utterly lacks Flash's intuitive interface and use.

Frankly I am of the opinion that Microsoft was wasting its time with Silverlight, that it would take Microsoft almost a decade to get it anywhere near the level of Flash. And Flash best period is probably over. From what I have seen and heard about HTML 5 its hard to see the real value of having to get a plugin at all. In 2002 Flash was pretty amazing, but it probably is time to embrace an open browser standard for defining rich multimedia.

My vote, Microsoft should probably just drop Silverlight entirely and make a deal with Adobe to create a Flash with .NET offering.