What you need to know
- Microsoft Silverlight is a framework for web app development.
- It is only currently supported on Internet Explorer 11, which is also being taken behind the barn soon.
- On October 12, 2021, Silverlight will no longer receive support.
Soon, the only light Microsoft Silverlight will see is the light at the end of the tunnel. As of October 12, 2021, no more than seven days after Microsoft officially welcomes Windows 11 into the world, it will drop Silverlight like a sack of potatoes and cease support operations.
In case you're not familiar with Microsoft Silverlight, it's a framework for web app development built for rich web applications. Think Adobe Flash. Currently, it's only supported on Internet Explorer 11, which is due for retirement in 2022.
Wondering what web apps ran on Silverlight? Well, Netflix, for a time. That should give you an idea of the framework's previous place in the world that it's soon to no longer be a supported part of.
If you want the full details on Silverlight's October retirement, check out Microsoft's support doc. It lists many nuggets of useful information, such as that past October 12, the Silverlight installer will no longer be available to download (so if you want it, now's the time). And given that it only runs in IE11, that means that once that Microsoft product is retired, your primary means of utilizing Silverlight will be through Microsoft Edge's Internet Explorer mode.
In that sense, Silverlight will live on; it just won't be in a state that's much different than death given how sequestered to a singular corner of most people's web activities it'll be. If you check out the dedicated Microsoft Silverlight site, you can see the big end-of-days banner at the top of the screen.
