Overview Of Microsoft Silverlight
Silverlight is actually a software tool from Microsoft for the purpose of generating ultra powerful, rich internet applications, it’s really virtually identical in attributes and also goal to Adobe Flash.
Microsoft on their own refer to their tool in the form of formidable development tool for creating engaging, interactive user experiences for Web and also mobile apps.
Some of the numerous qualities mentioned on their site consists of, IIS Smooth Streaming, Pivot Viewer, for visualizing huge amounts of data in a fun and visual way, Sketch Flow, more for sketching out an application and its uses, Deep Zoom, Pixel Shader and over 60 new controls just like charting and new media.
Even so, in contrast to Flash, Silverlight is a totally free plugin which is actually powered by the .Net framework, and so quite easy and also instinctive to use with Visual Studio, and it is ideal for a multitude of browsers and devices.
At first Microsoft focused upon streaming media etc but since then Silverlight has extended significantly to incorporate support for multimedia, graphics and animation.
Silverlight today even comprises support for specific languages and development tools, the truth is its also one of the key development platforms for the Windows phone.
Silverlight additionally utilizes XAML (Extensible Application Markup Language) to declare user interfaces, which means that it is simple to create Windows sidebar gadgets along with other fancy apps with nice vector graphics and animations.
You may as well write Silverlight applications in any .Net programming languages, meaning any development program that you can use in .Net, you may also use in Silverlight. Hence Microsoft are advertising Visual Studio as the ideal tool for programmers to create and debug Silverlight applications.
Since its introduction in 2007, Microsoft have updated Silverlight every year with version 1 in 2007 and version 5 (the latest and up to-date edition) launched in May 2012. The 2012 version (Silverlight 5) can actually be used on Windows and Mac and with Mobile devices running Windows or Symbian.
The below highlights each one of the versions and provides some back ground information.
Silverlight 1 was released in 2007, it was initially composed of a number of core features including the UI controls, media playback, DOM integration, interactivity and user input, and graphics and animation.
Silverlight 2 followed soon after from the same year and was much like version 1 but also included a version of the .Net framework which allowed it to run any other programs coded in any .Net language.
Silverlight 3 was introduced in 2008 as a beta after which they officially launched in July 2009. This version included even more controls such as DataGrid and TreeView, DataPager (made it possible for you see paginated data), DataForm (for form based applications) together with numerous layout panels.
Silverlight 4 was introduced in November 2009 as a beta with the official release in April 2010. This bundled more features than ever before for example rendering HTML, better localization, support for Google Chrome browser, new and enhanced controls a whole bunch more. It also came with Silverlight 4 tools for developers, offering up all the more development choices
Silverlight 5 was introduced for download in December 2011. The latest features included 64-bit support, 3D graphics, GPU accelerated video decoding and playback speed controls.