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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Keldryn" data-source="post: 5911304" data-attributes="member: 11999">Regarding Silverlight and why it was chosen...The original Character Builder software was written using Microsoft's Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) API, which debuted as part of the .NET Framework 3.0.  WPF is the successor to the venerable Windows Forms API and was built upon DirectX, allowing it to take full advantage of modern graphics hardware.Silverlight was originally called WPF Everywhere (WPF/E) and was designed to be a cross-platform API which could implement a subset of WPF features across different devices.   WPF was the natural choice for developing what was primarily a desktop application for release in 2008.  It can take advantage of modern graphics hardware, but it is also a much better platform for the developers.  This can't be stressed enough.  With a small development team, they need to work as efficiently as possible, and WPF has a lot of advantages there.When the decision was made to cease development and maintenance on the desktop CB app and move to an online-only solution -- and there are compelling reasons to do so other than to stop people from pirating software -- Silverlight was an obvious path.Silverlight isn't identical to WPF, but it's a pretty easy transition for a developer who is already experienced in working with WPF.  As a software engineer with experience in building applications using the traditional web-based infrastructure (HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP/ASP/etc) and with Silverlight and WPF, I can say that Silverlight is a much better experience for the developer.  All of the programming can be done in a single language, and you don't have to deal with all of the cross-browser incompatibilities; in this sense, it's like developing for a video game console versus developing for the Windows platform.Regarding HTML5...HTML5 is only a specification (which hasn't technically been finalized and won't be for some time).  It's not a development platform in the same sense.  HTML5 itself doesn't give you all of the modern graphical niceties like interactive charts and such.  It simply defines a standard "Canvas" element, the browser developers implement support for that element, and then a developer still needs to use Javascript libraries to actually draw the chart on the screen. The benefit of HTML5 is that there are no run-time libraries required in order to make use of it; so long as your browser vendor has implemented the appropriate features in the browser, it should work.  The downside is that developers still have to work with the mish-mash of technologies and languages which have come to define the web, and browser compatibility issues can be an absolute nightmare to iron out.If WotC's development team did not have a great deal of "traditional" web app experience, then Silverlight was the most reasonable choice, as it leveraged their existing knowledge and experience with WPF.  Plus, much of the code could be directly migrated over, especially if they were diligent about keeping presentational elements separate from program logic.  Developing an "HTML5 Solution" would have required pretty much starting over from scratch, plus a steeper learning curve while the developers got familiar with different tools and paradigms.So that's how "intelligent geeks" could see Silverlight as a solid option, even without getting into the relative newness of tablet devices that others have written about.To answer the actual question in your original post, I think that the 5e DDI will likely start over from scratch with its tools.  They've gotten a lot of flak for going with Silverlight and mobile devices have taken off much faster than expected, so a cross-platform solution is desirable.  Also, the core design of 5e looks to be very different from 4e, so re-purposing the 4e tools would probably be more work than building new ones.</blockquote>

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