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Silverlight 2.0 – What is Silverlight and Getting started with Silverlight

The article is based on the Silverlight 2.0 Beta 2 version and is subject to change.

Silverlight has created an amazing buzz amongst developers, especially the web ones. It is truly a beautiful concept which is being transformed into reality as the product matures day by day. I decided to take a plunge into this technology. Starting with this first introductory article, I hope you all will join me to embark this journey of learning Silverlight. I will try my best to keep up with the technology and share all my experiences while learning it through these articles at dotnetcurry. So get set and GO..

What is Silverlight ?

Silverlight is a lightweight cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in designed to create rich internet applications which is freely available for download. It enables developers to create Rich Internet Applications (RIA) and is a competitor to other RIA platforms like Adobe Flash, Adobe Flex, Google Gears, JavaFX and so on. Till date, there have been two ‘major’ Silverlight releases by Microsoft: Silverlight 1.0, and Silverlight 2.0.

Silverlight 1.0 – Silverlight 1.0 applications are a mixture of XAML (Extensible Application Markup Language), HTML, and JavaScript. When a Silverlight 1.0 application is run in the browser, it invokes the Silverlight control, which in turn loads up the XAML file.

Silverlight 2.0 – Silverlight 2.0 is a superset of Silverlight 1.0 and is the focus of this article. The major difference between the two lies in the fact that Silverlight 2.0 includes a refactored version of the .NET framework with CLR 3.0. This change brings along a flexible programming model and has been designed from ground up to support .NET languages like C# and VB.NET, which in turn lets you utilize your .NET skills. Silverlight 2 also supports Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR) for compilation and execution of dynamic languages like IronPython, Managed JScript and IronRuby.

Silverlight 2 comes with a subset of the WPF programming model and includes support for user interface controls, layout, databinding, documents, media, and animation. Silverlight can also deliver high-quality video to all major browsers running on the Mac OS or Windows.

Silverlight 2 is just a 4.6 MB download but the benefits are huge. The download contains a stripped down version of the .NET framework in your browser. So there is no need to install the .NET framework on client machines.

What advantages does Silverlight give me over Flash?

Flash is a technology to add animation and interactivity to your web applications. Flash provides a truly amazing cross browser cross platform support to create RIA’s. Silverlight also provides similar features. Silverlight however extends these features by providing a first-class programming framework that incorporates .NET. That means that you can write code that will execute at client side using a .NET language.