Dead · support ended October 2021

Your Silverlight application has no browser left to run in, and the people who built it have gone.

Where the business is

Microsoft ended Silverlight support in October 2021. No current browser will load it, so the application is either frozen on an old machine with an old browser, or being rewritten. The rewrite is where the money goes wrong, because the people who knew what the app actually did have usually left and the new team starts from a blank page.

What I do about it

I have built on Silverlight and I have moved businesses off it. The exit is a modern .NET web application over the same database, moved one screen at a time, so the business keeps running on the old app until the new one has proved itself. Where the app was generated by LightSwitch or WCF RIA Services, I know what the generator produced, which is what makes this a bounded migration rather than a rewrite from nothing.

Tell me what it runs on All Silverlight work

Silverlight engagements

7 shipped on it, migrated off it, or both

2011–2024Still running

Mason & Mason / DSM, Inc.

Right-of-way appraisal and eminent domain · Sole developer and architect

Thirteen years as the only developer for a right-of-way appraisal firm: the system the firm runs on, built inside their existing Lotus Notes investment, then rebuilt twice as Microsoft discontinued the platform underneath it, without stopping the firm's work.

Silverlight LightSwitch Lotus Notes C# .NET SQL Server Lotus Notes / Domino

2009–2011Shipped

The Comp Specialists, LLC

Workers' compensation · Interim CTO and lead architect

A physician's treatment pathways existed only as Visio drawings. Built the business that sells them, and the serial-number scheme that made the intellectual property sellable at all.

Silverlight .NET ASP.NET SQL Server Visio

2013–2023Delivered

ACD LLC

Cryogenic pumps and turboexpanders · Lead developer

An in-house pump and turboexpander sizing program turned into a customer-facing service, designed so neither the calculation code nor the customer list ever left the company's own servers.

Silverlight WCF C# .NET WPF IIS

2013–2015Handed over

CAPS Payroll

Entertainment payroll · Sole developer and rescuer

The engine that calculates entertainment residuals, rebuilt from scratch after both sources of truth for the union rules turned out to be wrong, so the money paid out is right.

LightSwitch Silverlight C# .NET SQL Server Azure

2012Delivered

Deluxe Digital Studios

Film localisation and post-production · Senior developer

A subtitle authoring tool for a film localisation team, and an encoding farm that had been failing silently made reliable, proved against seven deliberate failure cases before it went back into production.

Silverlight WCF C# .NET XAML WCF RIA Services

2008–2011Handed over

VectorUSA

Network and infrastructure contracting · Sole developer

Field labour capture for a network contractor: technicians, approvals and pay-period rules, replacing the slow Access front end accounting had been living with, and catching the duplicate dates and pay-period errors that were costing money.

Silverlight Microsoft Access .NET WPF ASP.NET web services SQL Server

2010–2011Ended