What Is Silverlight?

Silverlight is simply a browser plug-in that allows rendering of elements described with XAML in a web browser. Currently it supports several browsers and operating systems: Internet Explorer and Firefox on Windows, and Firefox and Safari on Mac OSX. Microsoft has been mum on the subject of Linux.

Figure 1 and Figure 2 show the same HTML and Silverlight code running in Internet Explorer and Firefox, respectively. Figure E-3 shows it in Safari on Mac OSX. Standard Silverlight applications use JavaScript to interact with the XAML markup, consistent with the way JavaScript in a browser interacts with HTML. The current plan is that future versions of Silverlight will have the capability to use managed code inside the browser as well as JavaScript. In the current version of Silverlight (February 2007 CTP), only the JavaScript Silverlight applications are supported.

Silverlight runs in Internet Explorer (shown here on Windows Vista)

Figure 1. Silverlight runs in Internet Explorer (shown here on Windows Vista)

Silverlight also runs in Firefox (shown here on Windows Vista)

Figure 2. Silverlight also runs in Firefox (shown here on Windows Vista)

Silverlight in Safari on Mac OSX

Figure 3. Silverlight in Safari on Mac OSX

Hello Silverlight

Showing XAML-based content in a browser is not revolutionary (WPF supports this out of the box, as discussed ...

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