Microsoft, in cooperation with Mayfair Games and Bontom Games, has developed a web version of Settlers of Catan. Everything is rendered via Canvas, players are invited via Facebook or email. The game is supposed to show what new techniques in browsers allow. Until now, this was known only to developers who had a competitive advantage over others. Recently, however, more and more examples have begun to appear that everyone can understand. There will certainly be more similar projects in the future.
The game is at catananytime.com.
Microsoft’s inability to bring ClickOnce to general use seems to have swept .NET out of Windows as well, clearing the way for web applications. If .NET were to run on Apple devices, it might still have a chance to compete with HTML5. However, Microsoft would not have been fragmented into many divisions at that time and would have had to replace Office for Mac support with MSIL support in Apple devices, for example. It looks like classic .NET will run mostly on servers. We now have excellent WPF over native code on both PC and Windows Phone, and the best of it even in HTML5 in the form of CSS3 Grid and KnockoutJS.