title: Alternative to Silverlight
body: <p>I've built an application (using Silverlight 4) which has been quite successful and is being used by a number of our clients.  We are planning for a new round of changes to the application, but we're concerned about the future of Silverlight and are pondering alternative approaches.  Here are the general requirements for our application -- we chose Silverlight specifically because it allows us to do all of these things:</p>
  <ul>
  <li>Must run on Windows and Mac</li>
  <li>Must allow for auto-updating when new features are added</li>
  <li>
  <ul>
  <li>Must allow for communication back to the server, but also allow network access on the user's LAN.</li>
  </ul>
  </li>
  </ul>
  <p>The last item is the kicker:  our application is used to communicate with a specific proprietary device. Sometimes that device is accessed &quot;in the cloud&quot; which is accomplished via RIA services back to our servers; but, in some cases the device exists on the user's LAN, so we're able to run out-of-browser and communicate with the device via a private LAN IP address.</p>
  <p>Is there an alternative approach for this scenario <em>in the Microsoft stack of technologies</em>?  Or technologies using other approaches?</p>
  <p>I'm concerned that Microsoft's roadmap for replacing Silverlight with HTML5 will not provide a mechanism for communicating on a user's LAN.</p>