Microsoft today unveiled the next iteration of its Silverlight technology, Silverlight 5, which the company said will improve things like media playback and the time it takes to develop applications, along with adding support for 3D and hardware acceleration.

"There's been a lot of angst on this topic in the last few weeks," Scott Guthrie, corporate vice president for Microsoft's developer division, told attendees of the company's Silverlight-focused Firestarter event at its headquarters in Redmond, Wash. "Let me say upfront that there is a Silverlight future, and we think it's going to be a very bright one."

Questions arose as to Microsoft's commitment to Silverlight development back in late October at the annual Professional Developers Conference, where there was little talk of the runtime. Instead, a sizable focus of the keynote went over how the company was building in faster, and more robust HTML5 compatibilities into Internet Explorer. Microsoft quickly responded to concerns by saying that the technology was still a very important part of the company's development efforts, and later offered up a free, Silverlight-focused Firestarter event as "just like an extra day of PDC, dedicated to Silverlight."

More: http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-20024410-75.html