Silverlight Overview
Web-based applications have often represented a compromise between creating a high-quality, engaging user interface (UI) and the amount of effort and time that a development team can put into the application. Developers generally believe that browsers simply do not support the interactive and expressive capabilities of a true client-based application. The result is that Web-based applications often do not take full advantage of the capabilities of the user's computer to provide an experience that users find not just functional, but exciting.
But now you can use Microsoft Silverlight. Silverlight is a new cross-browser, cross-platform implementation of the .NET Framework for building and delivering the next generation of media experiances and rich interactive applications (RIA) for the Web. Silverlight unifies the capabilities of the server, the Web, and the desktop, of managed code and dynamic languages, of declarative and traditional programming, and the power of Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). The result is a platform that lets you create and deliver sophisticated, cutting-edge applications that users will love. And Silverlight offers you great productivity through familiar tools and technologies based on the .NET Framework.
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, Apple Safari, and Opera, and on Microsoft Windows and Apple Mac OS X.
- It provides a consistent experience no matter where it runs.
- It is supported by a very 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, zoom directly in the browser.
- It reads data and updates the display, but it doesn't interrupt the user by refreshing the whole page.