Dead · support ended October 2021

Silverlight has no runtime left. The exit is screen by screen, not a rewrite.

Where you are

Silverlight support ended on 12 October 2021 and no current browser loads the plug-in. Every Silverlight line-of-business app is now frozen on an old machine with an old browser, or being rewritten, and the rewrite is where things go wrong, because the people who knew what the app actually did have usually left.

How I get you off it

I have shipped on Silverlight and migrated off it. The exit is a Blazor or ASP.NET Core front end over the existing database, moved one screen at a time with old and new running side by side, so the old app stays in production 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 makes the exit tractable rather than a blank-page rewrite.

Tell me what it runs on All Silverlight migrations and builds

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 sole developer for a right-of-way appraisal firm: an operating system built inside Lotus Notes, then rebuilt on Silverlight and again on LightSwitch as each was discontinued, ending as Esri-backed cloud sites over SQL Server.

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

2009–2011Shipped

The Comp Specialists, LLC

Workers' compensation · Interim CTO and lead architect

Treatment pathways that existed only as Visio drawings turned into a subscription product on ASP.NET and Silverlight, with a serial-number scheme that makes every printed copy verifiable.

Silverlight .NET ASP.NET SQL Server Visio

2013–2023Delivered

ACD LLC

Cryogenic pumps and turboexpanders · Lead developer

An internal WPF sizing program exposed to customers through a Silverlight front end brokering to a pool of VMs running headless copies, with the calculation code and customer identities never leaving the internal network.

Silverlight WCF C# .NET WPF IIS

2013–2015Handed over

CAPS Payroll

Entertainment payroll · Sole developer and rescuer

A residuals calculation engine rebuilt from scratch on LightSwitch, Silverlight and SQL Server after both sources of truth for the union rules were found to be wrong.

LightSwitch Silverlight C# .NET SQL Server Azure

2012Delivered

Deluxe Digital Studios

Film localisation and post-production · Senior developer

A Silverlight subtitle authoring tool over WCF RIA Services, and a GPU encoding pipeline driving the vendor SDK rewritten so a crashed encode can no longer pass as a finished one.

Silverlight WCF C# .NET XAML WCF RIA Services

2008–2011Handed over

VectorUSA

Network and infrastructure contracting · Sole developer

A WPF and Silverlight field labour capture system with an approval chain and pay-period rules, replacing an Access front end, and a web-service layer removed when it proved unreliable over the VPN.

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

2010–2011Ended