subject: Just What Is Silverlight [print this page] Silverlight is a software application developed by Microsoft, the best way to explain it to you, is to liken it to Adobe Flash. Silverlight in characteristics and purpose is a lot like Adobe Flash.
Microsoft by themselves explain their tool as;
Silverlight is a powerful development tool for creating engaging, interactive user experiences for Web and mobile applications. Silverlight is a free plug-in, powered by the .NET framework and compatible with multiple browsers, devices and operating systems, bringing a new level of interactivity wherever the Web works.
At the beginning the focus was quite definitely about creating rich and fascinating user experiences through rich media, streaming and animation allowing web developers to build really engaging and interactive sites, a lot like with Flash.
However what a lot of people are not aware of is just how much Silverlight right now features far more for business application development and just how in fact, Silverlight is actually being widely used for some other software over and above merely engaging content.
The reality is Silverlight is being employed within business for data management, CRM and many other business critical operations, in other words, a growing number of business applications are making usage of Silverlight to service business needs.
A business application carries a very particular function or goal, and generally helps an organization to cut costs or time, or simply to enables them to to improve customer satisfaction. Common examples could include CRM applications, time-tracking in addition to expense claim applications, e-commerce and e-tail experiences, purchase request applications, and HR employee management systems.
Users of business programs anticipate rich, functional, and well-performing interfaces like those commonly proposed by the desktop applications they are familliar with. With the latest business application-focused enhancements to Silverlight, the rich capabilities of its user interface, and the associated tooling provided by Visual Studio and Expression Studio, it's easy to rapidly construct this sort of application and enjoy the advantages of Web delivery and deployment.
So what exactly is Silverlight and additionally exactly how does it work? As said before above Silverlight is a software program from Microsoft for creating interesting content quite like Adobe Flash, but it is far more than Flash and might be used in business application development.
Silverlight is a absolutely free software program that comes in a browser plug-in format, there isn't any need to download it as an application to your C drive in fact it is consequently very small and self-contained.
Silverlight may be run in all of the key browsers including Mozilla, Firefox, Apple Safari, Opera, as well as Internet Explorer of course, and is also platform independent and operates by revealing a programming framework that is a subset of the .Net Framework.
To deploy Silverlight you may download it directly from the Microsoft website and download it onto your computer as a plug-in. You can think of this plug-in as a scaled down version of the .Net framework simply because it merely has the classes and functionality that is applicable to a Silverlight web client.
As a result, you'll be able to write real, compiled and managed code that is carried out in the context of the client browser itself. As a final point, Silverlight uses XAML (Extensible Application Markup Language) to construct the user interface.
Silverlight apps may be written in any .NET programming language. Therefore, any development tools which can be used with .NET languages can function with Silverlight. If you are dealing with Silverlight and XML, you can also use an XML Silverlight tool including Liquid XML studio.
