Advanced Dotnet Tutorial: Silverlight-Introduction

Silverlight is a web based technology, launched by Microsoft in April 2007. Silverlight is considered as a competitor to Adobes Flash.

Silverlight applications are delivered to browsers in a text-based markup language called XAML. One important difference between Flash and XAML is, Flash is a compiled application where as XAML is text based. Search engines can analyze and index such content, which is a huge benefit for webmasters.

For regular internet users, Silverlight is a browser plug-in that supports video, audio and animations.

For web developers, Silverlight offers much more. Silverlight supports video and audio files without need of much programming. It allows them to handle events from web pages (like handle start/end of video playing etc)

Silverlight enables development of the next generation of Microsoft .NET-based media experiences and rich interactive applications (RIAs) for the Web. Silverlight is delivered as a cross-platform and cross-browser plug-in that exposes a programming framework and features that are a subset of the .NET Framework and Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF).

Early Adopters

In response to the overwhelming developer community anticipation for the arrival of Silverlight, many developers and companies have become early adopters of the technology.

Some example sites are listed below:

World Series of Poker
Discovery Channel
The Emmys
Home Shopping Network (HSN)
World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE)
Fox
XBOX 360
Netflix - uses Silverlight to allow subscribers to instantly watch movies on their PCs or Intel-based Macs.

Silverlight Architecture

Unlike ASP.NET, the bulk of Silverlight processing occurs on the client machine thus decreasing server resource utilization and improving the Web experience on the client. The figure below shows the difference between ASP.NET processing and Silverlight processing:

When a client initially attempts to run a Silverlight application, if the Silverlight plug-in has not been installed on the client machine, it will be downloaded and installed. Upon subsequent requests to run the application, the application will instantiate on the client machine and make requests for resources from the server only when necessary. The Silverlight plug-in can be thought of as a scaled-down version of the full .NET Framework. It only contains those classes and functionality that are applicable to a Silverlight Web client and those were streamlined and optimized for use on the Web client machine.

Silverlight was designed using the same design paradigm as ASP.NET. Each page of a Silverlight application includes an associated code behind file that includes the code that handles events fired by the page. Silverlight resembles WPF in that it uses Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML) to construct the user interface (presentation layer). As Silverlight applications are composed of text-based files that include markup and code, they can be created using any text editor; however, more advanced tools and development environments such as Visual Studio or Expression Blend simplify the task significantly.

Silverlight Technologies

Version 1.0 of Silverlight used JavaScript and supported the industry-leading Windows Media Services enabling delivery of audio and video that includes 2D and vector graphics.

Version 2 includes all features of version 1.0 and: