Microsoft Launches Silverlight: An Alternative To Flash

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 playback of Windows Media content without requiring the Windows Media Player ActiveX Control or plugins for other internet browsers.

Silverlight will work in concert with 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

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