Even as questions remain about Microsoft's commitment to its Silverlight rich Internet plug-in platform, the company made available on Friday version 5 of the technology, featuring a variety of new capabilities.

Novell is porting Moonlight, an open source version of Microsoft's Silverlight rich Internet application plug-in software, to Google's Android mobile platform, a Novell official acknowledged on Tuesday afternoon.

Preaching the mantra of HTML5, Microsoft has begun offering a preview of its planned Internet Explorer 10 browser, which emphasises the critical Web specification and its visual effects.

Microsoft made available on Monday Sliverlight 4 Tools for Visual Studio 2010, an add-on package for the Visual Studio 2010 IDE providing tooling for the Sliverlight 4 rich Internet plugin-in platform.

Seeking an edge in the crowded rich Internet application technology space, Microsoft is officially launching on Friday its Silverlight 3 platform, featuring offline capabilities for running applications outside of a browser and improvements in areas like 3D.

Microsoft's Silverlight technology for rich Internet applications is gathering steam among developers in Asia, an Evans Data survey unveiled on Tuesday reveals.

Microsoft is planning a launch event on July 10 for its Silverlight 3 technology and the accompanying Expression Studio 3 toolset, a company representative said Friday evening.

Rather than being a time for retreat, the current tough economy presents an opportunity for designers to shine, a Microsoft official stressed Wednesday at the company's Mix09 conference for software designers and developers.

Research In Motion is set to bring full Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight support to the company's BlackBerry phones. The BoyGenius Report blog claims RIM will introduce the new functionality sometime next summer, together with more powerful handsets.

Microsoft recently announced that its next Office suite will have a free online counterpart. It also just released Silverlight 3.0, which competes directly with Adobe Flash. While each of these products is competitive in its own right, they're collectively part of a strategy by Microsoft to protect the future of Windows.

HTML 5, a groundbreaking upgrade to the prominent Web presentation specification, could become a game-changer in Web application development, one that might even make obsolete such plug-in-based rich Internet application (RIA) technologies as Adobe Flash, Microsoft Silverlight, and Sun JavaFX.