Microsoft Silverlight

Microsoft Silverlight is a plug-in for the browser which allows to start the applications containing animation, vector graphics and audio-video clips that is characteristic of RIA (Rich Internet application). Version 2.0 released in October, 2008 added support for the .NET[1][2] languages and integration with IDE. On July 10, 2009 at 6 p.m. Moscow time Microsoft released Silverlight 3 and Microsoft Expression Studio 3, on the Internet forward translation of an action on the website See the Light was conducted.

Silverlight is implemented for Windows 2000[3], Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Mac OS X 10.4, Mac OS X 10.5, Mac OS X 10.6 OS and the Internet Explorer 6.0/7.0/8.0, Mozilla Firefox 1.5/2.0/3 browsers, Safari 3.1, Google Chrome 3.0. In the future also support of Opera, mobile devices, starting with Windows Mobile 6 and Symbian (Series 60), and, perhaps, other platforms is planned.

Appointment

Silverlight provides the graphic system similar to Windows Presentation Foundation, and integrates multimedia, graphics, animation and interactivity in one software platform. It was developed to work with XAML and with the Microsoft .NET languages. XAML is used for a marking of the pages using vector graphics and animation. The text which is contained in applications of Silverlight is available to search systems as it is not compiled, and is available in the form of XAML. Silverlight can also be used to create widgets for Windows Sidebar in Windows Vista.

Silverlight supports reproduction of WMV, WMA and MP3 for all supported browsers, without requiring at the same time additional components, such as Windows Media Player. As Windows Media Video 9 is implementation of the standard SMPTE VC-1, Silverlight supports video VC-1, only in the container ASF. Besides, the license agreement says that it is authorized to VC-1 to use only in personal, non-commercial purposes ("personal and non-commercial use of a consumer") of .Silverlight allows to load dynamically XML and to use DOM for interaction with it the same as it becomes in Ajax. Silverlight contains an object of Downloader thanks to which it is possible to download scripts, media files, etc. if it is necessary for the application. Starting with version 2.0, the logic of the program can be described in any of the .NET languages, including dynamic programming languages such as Iron Ruby and Iron Python which are in turn performed in DLR (Dynamic Library Runtime), but not CLR (Common Language Runtime).

History

Silverlight 1.0 Beta

The first beta of Silverlight was released in December, 2006. Microsoft expected to release stable release in the middle of 2007. Rumors went that in Microsoft partial opening of the source code Silverlight [10] is planned, however they were disproved by Sam Ramji the director of Microsoft of the strategy of a technology platform. Nevertheless the part of Dynamic Language Runtime included in Silverlight is available on the Microsoft portal to a hosting of open and proprietary projects of CodePlex under Microsoft Permissive License.

Silverlight 1.0

The first beta of Silverlight was released in December, 2006. Microsoft expected to release stable release in the middle of 2007. Rumors went that in Microsoft partial opening of the source code Silverlight is planned, however they were disproved by Sam Ramji the director of Microsoft of the strategy of a technology platform. Nevertheless the part of Dynamic Language Runtime included in Silverlight is available on the Microsoft portal to a hosting of open and proprietary projects of CodePlex under Microsoft Permissive License. [править] Silverlight 1.0]

Architecture of Silverlight 1.0 applications

Silverlight v.1.0 is the connected module of the observer for processing of XAML plus codecs, for reproduction of multimedia contents in the WMV, WMA and MP3 formats. It represents to the observer the internal DOM model managed from JavaScript of the code. The XAML language is based on XML therefore the document defining the user interface loaded to the client — text and is quite suitable for indexing by search systems. Using the provided model DOM, JavaScript can dynamically update Silverlight contents, similar to DHTML. It is also possible to call methods of management of the presentation (start of animation or suspension of video playback, for example).

Silverlight the application begins with Silverlight object call from the HTML page loading the XAML file. The XAML file contains Canvas object acting as a substrate for other elements. Objects of XAML are capable to generate the events intercepted from JavaScript.

In a set "Silverlight Tools for VS 2005" are applied to the Visual Studio 2005 SP1.

The version for Linux

Project participants of Mono released on May 16, 2008 the implementation of a plug-in of Silverlight based on the open source software working at Linux — it cannot be considered as Moonlight, however neither the open, nor free software as permission to use of patents is provided only to receivers of the code from Novell, and only for creation of plug-ins. Moonlight 2.0 is in a status of Preview 3.

Silverlight 2.0

The version of Silverlight 2.0 was released on October 14, 2008 and included a subset of. net Framework libraries.

Besides, are available to downloading of Microsoft Silverlight Tools for Visual Studio 2008 which include:

• Templates for the Visual Basic projects and C#
• Intellisens and code generators for XAML
• Debugging of applications of Silverlight
• Web reference support
• Integration with Expression Blend

Silverlight 3.0

On March 18, 2009 at the MIX09 conference in Las Vegas Microsoft showed the beta. On July 10, 2009 during the action See the Light Microsoft announced official release of RTM of the version. Now the last is available to loading on the website of Microsoft.

Among features of the new version:

• Support of devices with the multitouch-interface
• Support of H.264, AAC and MPEG-4 formats
• Support of hardware acceleration during the work with three-dimensional graphics. It allows to involve the potential of the graphic processor and to lower load of the central processor

In the whole Silverlight is the cut-down Windows Presentation Foundation option which is not requiring existence of a. net Framework. At the same time possibilities of applications of Silverlight are almost boundless, all missing functionality can be implemented in the form of modules, using Silverlight SDK. Anyone can develop free of charge applications on Silverlight/WPF. For this purpose it is not obligatory to buy the Visual Studio and Microsoft Expression — Express-versions are available to non-commercial use on the website of Microsoft.

Silverlight 4.0

In the fourth version of Silverlight the possibility of transfer of a video flow from the client on the server in any applications of Silverlight differently is entered, than it was organized earlier.

Stream transfer from the client on the server were transferred in early versions by means of a Flash-application or by means of the Expression Encoder program; the video flow was transferred from the client to the server, and then was lost from the server in the Silverlight application.

For forward translation of audio/video from the microphone/webcam, in the fourth version, it is possible to do without Flash and Expression Encoder already.

Silverlight 5

The Silverlight 5 technology is based on Silverlight 4 also more than 40 new features among which there are abilities to integrate with a local system in the browser mode, considerable improvements of quality of video and performance of applications and also speed and convenience of work of developers include. The beta of Silverlight 5 will be available in the first half of 2011.

Creation of multimedia applications for stream broadcasting became the main success of the Silverlight platform. From this point of view of Silverlight 5 offers important innovations, including hardware acceleration at reproduction of flows of H.264 format, TrickPlay technology for fast rewind with reproduction of the corrected sound and also an opportunity to compulsorily disconnect a screen saver during demonstration of video records.

One more niche in which the Silverlight technology was at the best is business applications which are provided to clients in the form of web applications and in the form of normal desktop programs. For such applications the Silverlight 5 platform offers additional functions, including the improved tools for work with databases, hardware acceleration of graphics, the minimum delays of network interaction and enhanced capabilities of printing.

One more feature of Silverlight 5 – a possibility of creation of the "entrusted" applications. Such applications can carry out the tasks unavailable to normal Silverlight-applications, including creation of several windows at once and also a call of internal functions of the operating system using such methods as the P/Invoke method on the .NET platform, and special tools for interaction under the COM protocol. The company Microsoft as an example showed the "entrusted" application based on Silverlight 5 which successfully works with a protective USB key and with the scanner of barcodes.

Despite a loud premiere, the future of Silverlight technology still remains not clear. For traditional Windows applications there is already a set of building tools – Win32-tools, development of .NET-applications based on WPF technology, full-function development tools on the. net Framework platform, and now also Silverlight. At each approach is strong and weaknesses, but Silverlight technology remains only which offers real support of cross-platform work. Now Silverlight is supported not only in the environment of Windows, but also in Mac OS X, and even in Linux using Moonlight technology. On the other hand, full-scale .NET-development is as convenient as it in Silverlight, but in comparison with Silverlight offers more flexibility and functionality.

Anyway, existence of Silverlight technology as it stands is in question. The "entrusted" applications is a great advantage, but they work only in the environment of Windows so the only advantage of Silverlight – cross-platform – comes down to zero. Multimedia opportunities are not bad implemented in modern HTML5 standard. Besides, development of the desktop version of Silverlight strongly advances mobile version – in the mobile platform Windows Phone 7 Silverlight 3 is used. Nevertheless, the public beta of Silverlight 5 will appear next year – the official release is planned for the second half of 2011.

In updating of the platform of functionally rich Internet-applications of Silverlight 5 a number of new opportunities, including support of hardware acceleration of decoding of video H.264, support of printout of vector graphics of PostScript and low-level access to the graphic processor in Windows is implemented. Besides, now in browsers execution of the entrusted Silverlight-applications is possible.

Despite a release of the new version of Silverlight there are doubts that Microsoft intends to support this platform in the long term. Recently it was announced that in the Metro-version of Internet Explorer for Windows 8 there will be no opportunity to work with proprietary expansion units like Silverlight as these technologies are forced out by HTML5. Besides the vice president of Microsoft Scott Guthrie who was earlier the chief counsel of Silverlight passed a team on development of a cloud platform of Windows Azure several months ago.

Alternatives

The main alternative of Silverlight in browsers is use of JavaScript, SVG and HTML 5, and for interactive web applications — AJAX.

In the presence of plug-ins also use Adobe Flash from Adobe.

Prospects

Microsoft makes big plans concerning Silverlight technology — the head of department of Microsoft on servers and tools Bob Maglia in November, 2010 assured of the corporate blog. He tried to eliminate with this message the misunderstanding which arose after the recent interview for ZDNet in which Maglia described Silverlight as the platform of development for the Windows Phone 7 operating system also specified that he is suitable for creation of cross-platform web applications to HTML5 more.^[1]

During the report at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference conference the CEO of corporation Steve Ballmer mentioned Silverlight of all of times, and generally extolled possibilities of HTML5. Besides, Microsoft still did not call the term of a release of the new version of technology, Silverlight 5. All this forced observers to assume that Silverlight loses support in Microsoft.

However in the message Maglia claims that Silverlight still plays an important role as technology of creation of the web applications capable to work at different platforms of Microsoft, both desktop, and mobile. As podchergivat Maglia, Silverlight appointment — not to replace HTML, and to implement functions which are not in HTML and other technologies and to provide to developers ease of use of these functions.

At the end of November, 2011 the release of Silverlight 5 is planned, and it will be the latest version of the Microsoft platform, ZDNet with reference to the informed sources in the industry reports. Those claim that they repeatedly heard about it within two last weeks.

Microsoft did not confirm, but also did not deny this information. The official page devoted to cycles of support of products of Microsoft also does not clear up a situation.

Silverlight is the software platform allowing to create and by means of the corresponding plug-in to browse difficult digital content using the web browser. Besides, Silverlight is used for creating applications for Windows Phone 7. All this allows to consider it Flash alternative from Adobe company. The last, we will remind, refused release of new versions of a plug-in of Flash Player for mobile devices, having preferred to concentrate on more universal and open HTML5 standard.

Notes