Bold choice and a wrong one in my opinion too.

Let me try to explain. First almost all arguments mentioned by Yudah are just not valid. Secondly its a not a good strategy for going cross platform Let me go by them.

Ps im not trying to be cynical here.

• memory usage. Well try not to use the toolkit but Telerik. Thats saves a lot (get some good looking skins with it too)
• scrolling speed, common guys use a real grid. For example the telerik grid.
• loading flicker in the grid. Again use a real grid with binding against an observable collection. Ps paging is build in.
• copy and paste, you need to override some stuff in SL but it works cool too. If you go OOB you dont have that annoying question which you only get once.
• short cuts, SL eats the short cuts? Ever use your F keys in a browser? A SL OOB app has no problems with any shortcuts but one.
• checkboxes. Of course this is pretty easy in a SL app too. It makes me laugh with tears in my eyes. Really?
• cross browsers. Html 5 should be cross browser and that works most of the time. Sl works only on mac and pc. This could be a valid argument.
• single page html app/ web app instead of web pages. Sure but you need at least 2 extra libs to get stuff going on. Already used: typescript, knockout, jquery, latest js framework this week, etc etc in the future. instead of only using C#

Strategy for going cross platform (if this is a goal) The experience on an ipad or android will never be good for single page apps. Maybe its quick fix to support many platforms at once but it will never come close to native apps.

Instead use the logic from the SL app and use that in a portable lib which you can use in xamarin for building native apps. But you probably know this. So i dont think cross platform for the studio is an issue.

Anyway I you give it some thought

For the record, I work in Enterprise .NET and completely disagree with the previous comment. Grats on transitioning the old Silverlight Management UI to a more modern tech. I can't wait to hear what the other mystery features are.

Edward: There are no advantages in using Silverlight for Ravendb so why should they use it? The endless advantages in shifting to a pure HTML version makes the change obvious. A very good decision that should have been made earlier.

I guess the only reason they decided on Silverlight in the first place is because of the knowledge gained in Silverlight when developing the profiling applications.

I look forward to see how developers will extend the new studio.

@Paul Marvin You can say that you completely disagree with the my comment but did you watch the video and do you know SL at all? Did you actually compare the given arguments? Just yelling that you disagree with it all without saying why is just bad practice and bad manners. Working is an Enterprise.NET is just a plain non valid argument.

@Duckie 'There are no advantages in using Silverlight for Ravendb so why should they use it?' Well of course there are, for example SL is far more richer in functionality then html and the latest js framework of your choice. It does sound that you don't know SL at all. Interesting is that you're talking about 'The endless advantages in shifting to a pure HTML'. The only advantage of this is that it works in all browsers who know pure html. But maybe you can say more about this 'endless advantages of pure html' ?

@Edward lol

Anyways, yes I've written WPF, SL 4, WP 7, WP 8, and a tad bit of Windows Store...all of which use the XAML view engine, to which I have no direct complaints other than the sheer verbosity of the code. In fact, I really enjoy Windows Phone development. We currently use DevExpress for our legacy WebForms development, as we found it a better solution when compared to Infragistics and Telerik (at the time). That's not to say expert XAML experience won't take you to next level with Windows Phone and Windows Store, but don't be the developer who rides the Silverlight train to it's eventual end, that's about as open-minded as a 16 hour filibuster.

I stand by my comments, much love to Ayende, Hibernating Rhinos, and especially RavenDB which has shown me there is a real, native, enterprise capable alternative to business problems which are quite frequently solved with relational sql, not because it's the best technology to leverage, just because it's relational sql.

Also, if there was a PCL version of RavenDB I wouldn't have to store my JSON directly to disk on Windows Phone...just saying!

@Ayende,

These new arguments are better and of another nature.

• 'This is probably the most requested feature that we had' I know a 'most requested feature' which will never be implemented :-) Anyway, It is unwise not to listen to your (Dev) clients because you can learn from them too. But you want the best functionality and usability I think. Its going to cost you here big time. If you went OOB, a lib like telerik/devexpress with a centralized update server with silent updates, it would be a different story.

• 'It cause perception problem, because it is something people don't want to deal with. We have multiple users talkng about RavenDB and having to "explain" the SL usage.' I can relate to this. A valid argument. This is because of the shift at MS to Windows Mobile and wrong communication. Customers need in their perception stability and future proof guarantees. Web is good choice here. Customers/Devs should not explain them self when they are asked for an explanation. Your first argument probably relates to this argument.

• 'It cause browser crashes / hangs.' In the past I had this sometimes too in some browsers.

• 'Silverlight has no future. I am planning on the long term, and I really don't like that it isn't going to be there.' Could be, no one knows. For now it is supported at least until 2021. The mist of uncertainty does count though. We develop with an 5 years horizon and our .Net code is highly portable. There is nothing wasted but who knows the future?

In the end I dare to say that you never lost or will lose a client because of using SL. Raven is way more then the studio. That is not to say that it needed a much needed upgrade on usabality and shine. It does make all the difference.

@Edward - do you work for Telerik? I wouldn't go near their stuff if you offered me a trillion dollars.

@Ayende - When will this stuff be available? Love messing around with all the new stuff in RavenDB :D

Edward, yeah, in the demo, we didn't explain why we moved to HTML5, other than to mention the Raven community requested it often.

The performance stuff was just some quick wins in the new Studio, part of the demo; not to be confused with the motives for moving to HTML5.

So why did we move to HTML5? Oren summed up the reasons well above. Also, I've just published a blog post that goes into more detail: RavenDB Studio 3.0, and why we moved from Silverlight to HTML5: http://debuggerdotbreak.wordpress.com/2013/09/25/ravendb-studio-3-0-and-why-we-moved-from-silverlight-to-html5/

@philip Not working 4 telerik, we do use the SL set and some asp.net components with satisfaction. Btw I also mention devExpress. Do you have any real arguments not to touch it? Because you sound like someone just screaming.

@yudah. The arguments mentioned in the vid are just not valid. It isnt about what you didnt say but what you did say. Anyway its mostly about perception and expectation like Oren said. We just have to wait and see if it all works out.

@Ayende: That sounds more like you say potato, etc The latest maintenance release was juli 2013. It includes perf improvements, stabilty stuff etc: http://www.microsoft.com/getsilverlight/locale/en-us/html/Microsoft%20Silverlight%20Release%20History.htm