Microsoft Silverlight (code-named Windows Presentation Foundation/Everywhere or WPF/E) is a cross-platform XAML-based WPF technology that provides features such as video, vector graphics, and animations to multiple operating systems including Windows Vista, Windows XP, and Mac OS X. Specifically, the Silverlight runtime is provided as an plug-in for Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer 6, Internet Explorer 7, and Apple Safari.

These plug-ins will allow browsers to use Silverlight graphics capabilities. The browser plug-ins will be similar to Adobe Flash, a highly popular graphic plug-in available for most browsers. Internet Explorer will have native support for WPF in Windows Vista, and will support Silverlight in older versions. One advantage which Microsoft claims over Flash is that content created with Silverlight is more searchable and indexable. Silverlight also supports cross-platform playba[/b]ck of Windows Media content without requiring the Windows Media Player ActiveX Control or plugins for other internet browsers.

Silverlight will work in concert with [b]XAML and will be scriptable with JavaScript. Version 2.0 will also contain a version of the Common Language Runtime so it can execute VB.NET and C# code in a sandbox with no local file access.

Commonly mentioned as alternatives to Silverlight are Adobe Flex, Nexaweb, OpenLaszlo, and Ajax.

The first CTP of Silverlight was released in December 2006. Microsoft aims to have a final release by mid-2007.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Silverlight

See also: http://blogs.msdn.com/tims/archive/2007/04/15/introducing-microsoft-silverlight.aspx

the borg marches on!
We are Microsoft and We will assimilate your market share.resistance is futile.

@oyb LMAO!!!

Yeah, Microsoft At It Again.
But I think there's going a tough competition to Adobe. This may not be directly from
Microsoft's technical expertise but from stunts they will perform in promoting Silverlight.

First of all there're talks of open sourcing some portions of Silverlight.

Secondly there're is the DLR (Dynamic Language Runtime) which allows you to mix
serveral different languages in one program. I saw an example in which Javascript,
Ruby and VB.NET are mixed.

Thirdly there're serious plans by some open source projects to implement some parts of Silverlight on Linux.
At least that will fill the Linux gap. Although the part of Silverlight which they're most interested in is the DLR

Adobe will have to do some Marketing tricks also to counter MS. They already have the advantage of
market coverage i.e their're plug-ins are almost everywhere. I believe a little extra frendliness to
open standards (which already exists) and the open source community will help kick Microsoft out of it's domain.