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I am thinking of getting into windows phone development. As I understand it, currently a restricted version of silverlight is used. However, I keep hearing that silverlight is going away, to be replaced by javascript/css. Since I'm not plugged into the windows dev. community, I have no idea what is actually going on.

Is the future of windows phone development as uncertain as it seems? Is there a real possibility that silverlight will not be useful for future windows phone development?

Thanks

Shahbaz
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  • possible duplicate of [Getting Started with Windows Phone 7](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3402466/getting-started-with-windows-phone-7) – Preet Sangha Dec 31 '11 at 20:29
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    FYI, Silverlight is no way being replaced by HTML/CSS. HTML is a new _option_ for Windows 8 development. If anything, Silverlight will be "replaced" by the Metro app model, which is still XAML+C# (and it wouldn't surprise me to see this come to WP8). – Richard Szalay Jan 02 '12 at 12:04

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Winows Phone development really depends on the success of the phone itself right now (compared to iPhone and Android). I have developed apps for all of the major smart phone platforms and I personally think WP7 development is the easiest to use right now (It might just be that I like C# better than the other languages though). The biggest problem with WP7 development is that it isn't going to reach very many users right now since WP7 has a small share of the market right now. Hopefully it will get better.

As far as Silverlight goes... It isn't going anywhere. In fact Silverlight 5 was just recently released. They wouldn't continue to develop Silverlight if they don't plan on using it in the future. WP7 used to use Silverlight 3.5 (a modified version of Silverlight 3) as its base, but since Mango (WP7 v7.5) it uses Silverlight 4 as its base. It would take a very significant overhaul to move the WP7 away from Silverlight at this point and they already using it for the next major release.

Bryan Watts
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Well the release of Windows 7 has witnessed an overwhelming response. Its acceptability will be high and you should keep in mind that Nokia has partnered with Microsoft. Moreover, it has been receiving generally positive response from the developers community so learning windows phone development is not a bad idea at all. I would indeed recommend you to go for it. Learning the environment is relatively easy and Microsoft is heavily trying to push it in the market.

Rafay
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