From what I understand MS is abandoning Silverlight because they no longer need to compete with Adobe Flash as an addon for the majority of hand held devices that are currently in use because they don't allow addons. However the MS developer community and many large companies have embraced Silverlight as the UI of choice. Silverlight is widely used and is a fantastic product. I think MS is making a knee-jerk reaction and needs to realize that there is no reason to give up on Silverlight.

I think Silverlight is an option worth consideration because it is an easy and powerful tool with a lot of features. I've seen some pretty nice Silverlight demos and I was fortunate enough to get to work on a Silverlight Project and was very impressed with it. It wouldn't hurt to give it a test run and see what you think for yourself.