Currently, most of the Silverlight applications that are still in use today are used by organizations and enterprises. In this sense, companies will be able to continue executing Silverlight assets legally until after October 12, 2021 because according to Microsoft, the license is not linked to the continuation of support.
Given that Silverlight is a platform that until now was still working, but was practically hopeless, it led to the birth in 2020 of what could become its best alternative, OpenSilver, which is finishing its development and will even allow an application to be migrated. Silverlight before it reaches the end of its support process.
What is the new OpenSilver platform
We are talking about a platform that is based on a Silverlight redeployment, open source, modern and without plugins. It is executed from current browsers through WebAssembly, using Mono for WebAssambly and Microsoft Blazor, allowing user web development to create applications using C #, XMAL and .NET. It has just been launched in beta phase that is already available for download, preparing for version 1.0 that is scheduled for October 12, 2021, coinciding with the end of support date for Silverlight.
The release of OpenSilver is a way forward for .NET developers and IT departments that still have legacy Silverlight applications, providing an alternative to rewriting from scratch with other technology and allowing migration of legacy Silverlight applications while preserving all the features of the original apps.
This new development platform is distributed as an extension for Microsoft Visual Studio, allowing developers to recompile the source code of their Silverlight application into files such as HTML, CSS and WebAssembly that are recognized by any of the current browsers.
Migrate your applications from Silverlight to OpenSilver
One of the main advantages of the arrival of OpenSilver is the possibility of migrate the applications we have in Silverlight before the end of support date. This is something we can do ourselves or contact them to do the migration for us.
To migrate a Silverlight application, we only have to compile its source code using OpenSilver. This is something that we can do by installing the OpenSilver extension that we can download from its link. Later it will be necessary to create a new project in which to copy and paste the Silverlight code and compile it.
Since it is in beta, compilation errors may occur as some features are not supported. This is something that can be solved with limitations, either by importing a .NET Standard library or a JavaScript library. At the time we have compiled the application, it will be able to run in any modern browser without the need to install any add-ons.
