Silverlight - A Futuristic Vision

Microsoft® Silverlight™ a cross browser, cross platform .NET plug-in that enables designers and developers to build rich media experiences and RIAs for browsers. The preview builds we released this week currently support Firefox, Safari and IE browsers on both the Mac and Windows.It is a is a web browser plugin that provides support for rich internet applications as animation,vector graphics, audio video playback and it competes with products such as Adobe Flash, Adobe Flex, Adobe Shockwave, and Java FXApple Quicktime.Silverlight was developed under the codename Windows Presentation Foundation/Everywhere (WPF/E).Silverlight has been written in the combination of C and C++.

To get a sense of the types of rich browser applications you will be able to build using Silverlight, please check out this 7 minute video of the Metaliq "Top Banana" video editor sample application:

The "Top Banana" application was built with C# and runs cross platform on any system where Silverlight is installed. The total download size of the application (meaning the size of all of the XAML + compiled code when a user types in the URL of the site) is only ~50kb. Some of the applications built on Silverlight are Netflix (showing off a great "movie on demand" video service with social networking support), CBS (showing off user generated video support), Metaliq (showing the above video editor application) and MLB.com (showing off their awesome new Major League Baseball online experience).

Silverlight 1.0 is made up of
1.Input – handling input from devices like keyboard, mouse,etc.
2.UI core – managing rendering of bitmap images
3.Media – playback of MP3,WMA Standard, WMV7, WMV8 and WMV9/VC-1 streams.
4. XAML to allow the UI layout to be created using XAML (Extensible Application Markup Language)markup language.It has a file size of 1.6 MB.

Check this TV Commercial for Silverlight :

In Silverlight 2.0 the developers can write Silverlight applications using any .NET language including VB, C#, JavaScript and IronPython.It has a Beta Version of filesize 4.3MB. Silverlight is compatible in Firefox, Safari and IE browsers in Windows XP/Vista and Mac OS 10.4/10.5.It is also planned to support Windows mobile edition also.The same product in Linux has been planned in the version named "Moonlight" which supports both linux x86/x86-64 architecture.