This article will be very helpful for the beginners who want
to know and start development on Silverlight projects, if you are already
working on Silverlight you will find complete understanding of Silverlight
Introduction. In this article I have started with definition of Silverlight,
purpose of the Silverlight technology and different versions released so far.
You will also see development tools required to work with Silverlight. End of
this article you will get the complete introduction of Silverlight.
What is Silverlight?
1.
Silverlight is the new Microsoft technology on web platform for Rich
Internet Applications (RIA) launched by Microsoft in 2007.
2.
Silverlight supports multiple browsers called cross-browser technology,
which includes Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari, opera etc…
3.
Silverlight supports multiple Operating Systems called cross-platform
technology, which includes Windows family of OS, Mac, and Linux with moonlight
technology (Moonlight is an open source implementation of Silverlight, primarily
for Linux and other Unix/X11 based operating systems).
4.
Silverlight is also supports multiple devices called cross-device
technology, which include mobile devices to desktop browsers to 720p HDTV video
modes etc…
5.
Silverlight is a browser plug-in approximately 4MB in size, it is client
side free software for easy and fast less than 10 sec one time installation
available for any client side browsers.
6.
Silverlight supports the display of high-definition video files, and
sending them over the Net.
7.
Silverlight applications are delivered to a browser in a text-based
markup language called XAML. XAML is a
declarative markup language that you can use to define the UI elements for your
Silverlight-based application.
8.
Silverlight is considered as a competitor to Adobe's flash technology.
9.
One of the design goals of the Silverlight technology is to fill the gap
between windows application and web application in terms of creating Graphical
User Interface (GUI). So far web developers were not able to make client happy
in terms of UI, but now web developer will be able to full fill this with the
help of Silverlight technology.
Why Silverlight?
Here is the list of advantage why we should go with
Silverlight over the Flash and other technologies already available:
1.
Support of .NET framework: – if you are already .NET developer it is
easy to start programming on Silverlight.
2.
Support of Managed code: – you can write programming in your favorite
language which .NET CLR supports like C#,VB.NET, Dynamic languages(IronPython,
IronRuby)
3.
Better development tools: -Visual Studio 2010, Expression Blend.
4.
Large community: - available lot of learning resource as compare to
Flash technology
5.
Integration with Enterprise based technologies: - like WPF, LINQ etc…
