William Thompson

William Thompson

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What browsers does Silverlight run in and what browsers and versions of browsers does Silverlight not run in?

Sep 24 2011 3:48 PM

What browsers does Silverlight run in and what browsers and versions of browsers does Silverlight not run in?

What are the browser formats to be concerned with if you want your web site to be viewed universally?

I mean, if you can develop a cool silverlight app, I know that Silverlight does not run on Internet Explorer 64 bit. So I guess I would have to use HTML 5 for that.

What about the other browsers and platforms and what would be the replacement technologies?

This web page gives a good idea of what browsers / Operating Systems / and Browser versions are compatable
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Silverlight#Compatibility

Here is a graphic from that web page that shows what browsers use SilverLight:
[IMG]http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h292/Athono/chart01.png[/IMG]

The first thing I noticed about this chart was all the grey "N/A" areas.  These are clearly areas that we do not have to worry about. We don't have to worry about these areas because they represent a browser and OS combination that does not exist.  For example, there are no Internet Explorer version 6 running on windows 7.

If I was to circle the areas where I am concerned with for using Silverlight, it would look like this:

[IMG]http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h292/Athono/chart02.png[/IMG]

And if I was to circle the areas in red where I need to find some other way of representing dynamic information (like for flash) it woould look like this:

[IMG]http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h292/Athono/chart03.png[/IMG]

So this makes new questions.

#1.  Does flash run on SeaMonkey, Safari, and Opera
#2.  Does flash run on the Mac OS.

What is missing in this chart is all the Linux distributions.  Does Flash run on all those or do I need to find an alternative?

Also, this chart does not even mention Internet Explorer 9 64-bit which is why I started this question in the first place.  I understand that HTML5 is supposed to be the next big thing that runs on this browser.  Will it run on other browsers?