Microsoft Gung-Ho On Silverlight

In a crowded hall, filled with cheering designers and developers, Ray
Ozzie, Chief Software Architect, Microsoft declared the availability of first beta version
of Silverlight 1.0 MIX 07, which was held in Las Vegas. MIX is a web developer-oriented
conference that Microsoft held for the second year in a row.

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Scott Guthric, GM—Client and Web Platform and Tools, Microsoft (far left) at a keynote session

Both the Silverlight 1.0 Beta and Silverlight 1.1 Alpha are immediately
available for downloading at the Microsoft Silverlight website. As Ozzie launched into the
details about the product roadmap and how it would make working easier for developers and
designers, many present at the keynote began downloading the software instantly.

Microsoft Silverlight, previously codenamed Windows Presentation
Foundation Everywhere (WPF/E), integrates existing web technologies and assets to provide
higher-quality experiences with lower costs for media delivery. Delivered to end users
through seamless, fast installation, Silverlight offers consistent experiences to both
Macintosh and Windows users on a variety of browsers including Internet Explorer, Firefox
and Safari.

Ozzie declared that Microsoft had at that very moment also started
shipping a cross-platform version of the .Net framework for the browser in Silverlight. He
also announced the availability of Expression Studio—a Visual Studio-like suite of
solutions aimed at the web and creative designers.

Silverlight is essentially a cross-browser, web-based version of
Microsoft’s Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), the user-interface framework in
Windows Vista. It is considered by many as Microsoft’s competing product for
Adobe’s Flash Player, a popular method that is used by developers to add multimedia
to websites. Microsoft officials however refute that Silverlight is in any way positioned
to be a competitor to Flash.

According to Ozzie, "Silverlight is a target at the universal web.
It is a cross-platform, cross-browser plug-in that will give you high-quality output and
will make the coding part easier. It works with Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, and
Apple Safari. Silverlight will allow designers and developers to add high-resolution,
high-quality animation and video to the websites."

He said, "Developers these days face tough choice because of the
richness of technology that is available. It becomes tougher and technology with it brings
architectural and infrastructural drawbacks. Increasingly we are becoming a world where
universal web—that is html, ajax, flash—come together to make user applications.
SAAS as a concept also changed; it is now not software as service but software and
service. Even SAAS providers have found the need to expand offerings to include an offline
edition. While the first version meant only the web, the second version of SAAS
has come to embrace the unique value of the client as well."

Some leading media companies, endorsed Silverlight vouching for its
dependability and ease of use. Talking about their experiences with Silverlight, Neil
Hunt, Chief Product Officer, Netflix said, "We are leading the way for people to rent
movies for instant viewing over the Internet. With 6.3 million members, Netflix needs
rapid scalability so that our members can enjoy DVD-quality movies on our instant-viewing
feature. We depend on Microsoft Windows Media technologies, and are excited about
Microsoft Silverlight as a platform to enable instant watching of great content for all
our members, on multiple platforms."

Endorsing Silverlight Paul Sagan, President and CEO, Akamai commented,
"Silverlight represents a significant leap forward for customers looking for
cost-effective rich media solutions with assured application delivery using Windows Media
technologies."

Shivangi Yadav

(The author was hosted in Las Vegas by Microsoft)