Microsoft Silverlight is an application framework for writing and running browser plug-ins or other rich internet applications, with features and purposes similar to those of Adobe Flash. The run-time environment for Silverlight is available as a plug-in for most web browsers. While early versions of Silverlight focused on streaming media, current versions support multimedia, graphics and animation, and give developers support for CLI languages and development tools. Silverlight is also one of the two application development platforms for Windows Phone 7.
By mid 2011 Microsoft will have released 5 versions over the course of 4 years: the first version was released in 2007; the current version, 4 ,was released in April 2010 and the 5th version is scheduled for release in the first half of 2011. It is compatible with multiple web browsers used on Microsoft Windows andMac OS X operating systems. Mobile devices, starting with Windows Phone 7 and Symbian (Series 60) phones, were expected to be supported in 2010.
A free software implementation named Moonlight, developed by Novell in cooperation with Microsoft, is available to bring Silverlight versions 1 and 2 functionality to Linux, FreeBSD and other open source platforms - although some Linux distributions do not include it, citing redistribution and patent concerns.
Silverlight provides a retained mode graphics system similar to Windows Presentation Foundation, and integrates multimedia, graphics, animations and interactivity into a single runtime environment. In Silverlight applications, user interfaces are declared in Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML) and programmed using a subset of the .NET Framework. XAML can be used for marking up the vector graphics and animations. Silverlight can also be used to create Windows Sidebar gadgets for Windows Vista.
Silverlight supports H.264 video, Advanced Audio Coding, Windows Media Video (WMV), Windows Media Audio (WMA) and MPEG Layer III (MP3) media content across all supported browsers without requiring Windows Media Player, the Windows Media Player ActiveX control or Windows Media browser plug-ins. Because Windows Media Video 9 is an implementation of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) VC-1 standard, Silverlight also supports VC-1 video. According to the End user license agreement VC-1 and H.264 are only licensed for the "personal and non-commercial use of a consumer". Silverlight, since version 3, supports the playback of H.264 video. Silverlight makes it possible to dynamically load Extensible Markup Language (XML) content that can be manipulated through a Document Object Model (DOM) interface, a technique that is consistent with conventional Ajax techniques. Silverlight exposes a Downloader object which can be used to download content, like scripts, media assets or other data, as may be required by the application. With version 2, the programming logic can be written in any .NET language, including some derivatives of common dynamic programming languages like IronRuby and Iron Python.
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