Introduction to Microsoft Silverlight

Introduction

Microsoft Silverlight is a web application framework to build rich internet applications based on .NET. The end user needs to install a small (4MByte) browser plugin to use Silverlight. The installation is quick and simple.

The plugin is available on Windows and Mac OS, and in runs under Internet Explorer, FireFox and Safari, there is also an open source version for Linux called Moonlight (in dependence to Mono). Microsoft plans to bring the Silverlight platform to the mobile world. There will be a version for Windows Phone 7 and Symbian Series 60 available in 2010.

Develop Rich Internet Applications in C# and VB.NET

The Silverlight plugin includes a subset of the .NET framework. This allows developers of Silverlight to reuse their skills and knowledge and let them write code in their favorite programming language like C# or VB.NET.

To develop Silverlight applications you can use Visual Studio 2008 or 2010

The UI framework of Silverlight is a subset of the Windows Presentation Foundation. It allows you to write your views in a declarative XML syntax called XAML.

What's new in Silverlight 5

Only a few month ago, Microsoft released Silverlight 4, and already Silverlight 5 is on the way. Today (02.12.2010), Scott Guthrie, vice president of the Microsoft Developer Division announced Silverlight 5 at the Silverlight Firestarter event at Redmond. The new Version will include many demanded and cool new features like:

• Richer Media Support
• 3D Support
• P/Invoke
• Elevated rights in the browser
• Vector printing
• Multiple windows (out-of-Browser only)
• Improved DataBinding (almost like in WPF)
• Custom MarkupExtensions
• Debugging DataBinding
• UI Testing

A public beta will be available in spring 2011. The final version is expected in the end of 2011