In October of 2008, Microsoft released Silverlight, a free runtime programmable web browser plug-in that powers rich application experiences and delivers high quality, interactive video across multiple platforms and browsers, using the .NET framework. Some of the features it enables include animation, vector graphics, and audio-video playback that characterize rich Internet applications.
Developed under the codename Windows Presentation Foundation/Everywhere (WPF/E), Silverlight allows the integration of audio, video and interactivity in a single runtime environment, in the same way the Windows Presentation Foundation does. Working in conjunction with XAML, they contents of a Silverlight application can be indexed and is searchable by search engines.
Content-wise, it supports the usual array of WMV, WMA and MP3 formats without requiring Windows Media Player, Active X control or even a Windows Media Player plug-in. This makes it a one-stop centre for Internet multimedia and eliminates the need to download different plug-ins for the same application.
Silverlight is compatible with Windows Vista Home and Professional Edition as well as with the Windows Mobile 6. Mac users can also download this plug-in since it can be used on the Mac OS.
Essentially, Silverlight 1.0, which was created over a year ago, was intended to be Microsoft's answer to Adobe Flash and Flex and several other rich Internet application and AJAX frameworks.
Silverlight 1.1 was such an important upgrade for Microsoft that it was eventually renumbered Silverlight 2. Silverlight 2 supported all .Net languages, including the dynamic languages such as IronPython and IronRuby, and it contained a good portion of the .Net base classes, including new features such as LINQ (language-integrated query). In addition to its rich set of controls, it had APIs for an alphabet soup of networking, including REST, SOAP, RSS, and HTTP.
Silverlight 3.0 will certainly prove to be just as successful. Aside from being the most comprehensive offering for the rapid creation and delivery of sophisticated applications through a Web browser, it is also forged from technology used in over 100,000 companies and understood by over four million developers worldwide. Silverlight has the full support of Microsoft's tools, technologies, and a thriving partner ecosystem.
Silverlight enables you to create a state-of-the-art application that has the following features:
· It is a cross-browser, cross-platform technology. It runs in all popular Web browsers, including Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, and Apple Safari, Google Chrome, and on Microsoft Windows and Apple Mac OS X.
· It is supported by a small download that installs in seconds.
· It streams video and audio. It scales video quality to everything from mobile devices to desktop browsers to 720p HDTV video modes.
· It includes compelling graphics that users can manipulate—drag, turn, and zoom—directly in the browser.
· It reads data and updates the display, but it doesn't interrupt the user by refreshing the whole page.
· The application can run in the Web browser or you can configure it so users can run it on their computer (out-of-browser).
The specs might make sense to a web developer, but what about the average man? Normal Internet users won't care whether the site they're visiting is made from Flash or Silverlight. How will it affect them?
Well, Silverlight applications are delivered to a browser in a text-based markup language called XAML. That's no big deal for Web users once they land on a site. But search engines, like Google, can scan XAML. They can't dive into compiled Flash applications. Flash-heavy sites do often wrap their applications in Web code that search engines can crawl, although it's extra work for developers and designers to do it, and may not yield search results that are as good as they would be if the search engine was indexing the actual application instead of keywords tacked on after the fact. Silverlight applications will be more findable.
To run a Silverlight application, users require a small plug-in in their browser. The plug-in is free. If users do not already have the plug-in, they are automatically prompted to install it. The download and installation take seconds and require no interaction from the user except permission to install.
Also, for the users who opt for less-used platforms and browsers such as Firefox and Google Chrome, this plug-in will endear to them, since most Internet applications run on popular platforms. And although Microsoft doesn't usually tread the waters of Mac and other operating systems, most web developers have given positive early reviews to Silverlight and this opens a lot of possibilities.
Silverlight technology is already available for download on select platforms. And although it is still new, it is promising to be an important part of Internet applications in the future.
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