Silverlight

Microsoft Silverlight is a web application framework that integrates multimedia, graphics, animation and interactivity into a single runtime environment. It is compatible with multiple web browsers used on Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X operating systems. Mobile devices like Windows Phone 7 and Symbian phones are also supported.

Microsoft Silverlight powers engaging, interactive user experiences wherever the web works. It’s a powerful development platform for creating rich media applications and business applications for the Web, desktop, and mobile devices. Silverlight is a free plug-in powered by the .NET framework that is compatible across multiple browsers, devices and operating systems to bring a new level of interactivity wherever the Web works. With support for advanced data integration, multithreading, HD video using IIS Smooth Streaming, and built in content protection.

Why Use Silverlight?

• Synchronize the workflow between designers and developers

• Create applications and add interactivity without writing code

• Deliver uniquely styled and branded applications across many screens

• Use SketchFlow to quickly experiment with layout, flow, and transitions, making it easy to create and iterate on prototypes

Compelling Experiences with Silverlight

• Engage users longer and make the most of your content with interactive features and high-definition streaming video delivered through live and on-demand IIS Smooth Streaming.

• Build user “buzz” and differentiate yourself with innovative capabilities, such as Deep Zoom and Pivot, which push the boundaries of interactivity and data visualization, and provide new ways to present your brand.

• Silverlight enables Web-based applications to deliver the business functionality users demand with a modern, efficient UI while securely interacting with desktop files, devices, data and applications such as Microsoft Office.

• Create rich Web-based applications that quickly integrate with your existing back-end systems. Easily enhance existing Web and SharePoint sites by incrementally adding Silverlight components.

Designing for Silverlight

Developers and Designers can create user experiences using the innovative Expression Studio design environment. Built from the ground up, Expression Studio helps designers and developers to produce interactive Silverlight websites and rich media assets efficiently. Designers can design a broad range of Web sites and applications with an extensive set of rich media content types, from vector/bitmap graphics, text, video and audio to key frame-based animation and effects plus breakthrough Silverlight features like DeepZoom, Pivot and Smooth Streaming.

Overview

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 supports 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. 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.

Silverlight 4

Silverlight 4 delivers a full suite of powerful features to business application developers, bringing innovative platform capabilities to browser-based experiences. Silverlight provides an ideal platform for developing and deploying modern business applications for both internal and end-user applications.

Top Silverlight Features

IIS Smooth Streaming

IIS Smooth Streaming enables you to deliver high definition streams that play back smoothly on any device running Silverlight.

Out of Browser

Silverlight offers a new set of features for building light-weight, sandboxed companion experiences for the Web that run on the desktop. It enables the application to be placed in a restricted store on the user’s machine; and then provide a link directly to it from the user’s desktop or start menu. This is all enabled within Silverlight without any additional download of runtime or the need to write applications in a different way. An application can now be easily found on the user’s desktop or start menu, and launched with a single click.

SketchFlow

SketchFlow, part of Expression Studio Ultimate, revolutionizes the speed and efficiency with which you can demonstrate a vision for an application. SketchFlow provides an informal and quick way to explore, iterate and prototype user interface scenarios allowing you to evolve your concepts from a series of rough ideas into a living breathing prototype that can be made as real as a particular client or project demands.

Deep Zoom

Silverlight Deep Zoom is the fastest, smoothest, zooming technology on the Web, bringing the highest resolution images and frame rates with the lowest load times to users. Deep Zoom also enables the display of thousands of items simultaneously, giving designers and developers new opportunities to create innovative navigation paradigms for both applications and the Web.

By optimizing the way images are stored and intelligently downloading only the pieces of information needed to fill the screen, Deep Zoom removes technical barriers and enables the delivery of engaging customer and content-centric experiences.

PivotViewer

PivotViewer makes it easier to interact with massive amounts of data on the web in ways that are powerful, informative, and fun. By visualizing thousands of related items at once, users can see trends and patterns that would be hidden when looking at one item at a time.

New Controls

Silverlight is packed with over 60 high-quality, fully skinnable and customizable out-of-the-box controls such as charting and media, new layout containers such as dock and viewbox, and controls such as autocomplete, treeview and datagrid. The controls come with eleven professional designed themes and the source code can be modified/recompiled or utilized as-is. The professional themes that make your applications stand out and improve the overall look-and-feel of your Silverlight UI are:

Bubble Creme, Bureau Black, Bureau Blue, Expression Dark, Expression Light, Rainier Purple, Rainier Orange, Shiny Blue, Shiny Red, Twilight Blue and Whistler Blue.

Media Format Extensibility

With the new Raw AV pipeline, Silverlight can easily support a wide variety of third-party codecs. Audio and video can be decoded outside the runtime and rendered in Silverlight, extending format support beyond the native codecs.

Perspective 3D Graphics

Silverlight allows developers and designers to apply content to a 3D plane. Users can rotate or scale live content in space without writing any additional code. Other effects include creating a queue in 3D and transitions.

Skinning and Styling

Silverlight makes it easy to create graphics and then use them to customize controls. Silverlight provides XAML based templates for each control that allow designers to reach inside the control and change the layout or look of each part of the control without rewriting any code. In addition, controls can be themed by applying a style.

Silverlight 4 support for Platforms and Browsers

Silverlight is supported by all major browsers on both Mac OS X and Windows, and with Moonlight on Linux as well. Silverlight 4 ensures consistent experience on browsers including Internet Explorer 6, 7 8, Firefox 2 and 3, Safari 3 and 4, and Google Chrome.

Features of Silverlight for Windows Phone 7

Silverlight for Windows Phone will support core Silverlight features while optimizing for capabilities specific to the Windows Phone 7. Feature highlights include the following:

• Hardware-accelerated video with multi-codec digital rights management (DRM) and Internet Information Services Smooth Streaming support

• Vector and bitmap graphics with perspective 3-D

• Multi-touch support with Accelerometer, an intuitive control that responds to motion

• Deep Zoom support for rich reading experiences

• Camera and microphone support

Microsoft Silverlight Toolkit

The Silverlight Toolkit adds new functionality for designers, developers, and the community to provide an efficient way to help shape product development. It includes full open source code, samples, documentation, and design-time support for controls focusing on both Silverlight 4 as well as the Windows Phone.

WCF RIA Services

WCF RIA Services is a new part of the .NET 4 and Silverlight 4 frameworks that lets you quickly build N-Tier Silverlight client applications without needing to focus on the service plumbing to get data into and out of your client application from back-end services, logic and data access.

Microsoft WCF RIA Services simplifies the traditional n-tier application pattern by bringing together the ASP.NET and Silverlight platforms. RIA Services provides a pattern to write application logic that runs on the mid-tier and controls access to data for queries, changes and custom operations. It also provides end-to-end support for common tasks such as data validation, authentication and roles by integrating with Silverlight components on the client and ASP.NET on the mid-tier.