DevTopics » Silverlight

Silverlight 4 Released

timm — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 15:07:22 +0000

Silverlight is a powerful development platform for creating engaging, interactive user experiences for Web, desktop, and mobile applications when online or offline. 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. Silverlight is also one of the programming models for Windows Phone 7 devices.

Key new features in Silverlight 4 include:

Set of forms controls with over 60 customizable, style-able components.
Comprehensive printing support.
The .NET Common Runtime (CLR) now enables the same compiled code to be run on the desktop and Silverlight without change.
Enhanced data-binding support, data grouping/editing, and string formatting within bindings.
Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF) supports building large composite applications.
Silverlight design support in Visual Studio 2010 with drag & drop data-binding, and full IntelliSense.
Localization enhancements with Bi-Directional text, Right-to-Left support and complex scripts such as Arabic.

Silverlight Homepage
What’s New in Silverlight 4
Developing for Windows Phone 7 with Silverlight

Silverlight 3 Released

timm — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 15:05:07 +0000

Silverlight is a Web application development framework similar to Adobe Flash. Microsoft has just released Silverlight 3, a major update that delivers many new features including:

Hardware graphics acceleration, which lowers CPU usage and enables 1080p HD video over the Web.
Support for H.264 video, AAC audio and MPEG-4 content.
Smooth media streaming over HTTP.
3D-perspective support that can be used with graphic elements, videos and controls.
New bitmap and pixel APIs, and custom effects.
Out-of-Browser support. Users can safely install Web applications on their computers, create desktop and Start Menu shortcuts.
New network detection support to switch between online and offline modes.
Automatic update mechanism for applications.
Over 100 UI controls with full styling and template customization support.
Richer data binding features
A new DataForm control enables better master/detail scenarios.
SaveFileDialog support.
New navigation framework that enables deep-linking and forward/back button integration within the browser.
Search engine optimization (SEO) support so that content within a Silverlight application can be indexed by search engines.
Better text rendering and font support (a common complaint that resulted in the loss of a major customer).
Better accessibility support.
Major updates to Expression Blend and Sketchflow.

Download Silverlight 3
Silverlight Community
Microsoft Silverlight Home Page

Win $10,000 in Silverlight Coding Competition

timm — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 15:20:20 +0000

ComponentArt is hosting the 2009 Summer Silverlight Coding Competition. Author of the best application as selected by their expert panel and the community will receive a grand prize of $10,000 USD. Authors of the two runner-up applications will each receive ComponentArt licenses (a $1,299 USD value).

Applicants are not required to use ComponentArt’s products to enter the competition. Community voting opens on July 7, 2009. Expert Panel judging starts at the end of September, so you can continue improving your app until then.

Silverlight Coding Competition

Silverlight Losing Another Major Customer

timm — Thu, 14 May 2009 15:44:47 +0000

Dealing another significant blow to the Microsoft Silverlight web development platform, the New York Times is abandoning Silverlight and Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). Rob Larson from the New York Times writes:

Next week we’ll be introducing Times Reader 2.0. This version is powered by Adobe AIR and will run equally well on Windows, Mac and Linux computers. With this latest release, Times Reader resembles the printed paper even more closely, and it updates every five minutes with the latest news from the Web.

The timing is awkward to say the least, with Microsoft actively promoting its New York Times Silverlight Kit. This toolkit enables developers to use the Times’ APIs with little or no coding, instead using mostly XAML.

The Times is dropping Silverlight for many of the same reasons that Major League Baseball benched Silverlight in April: compatibility and glitches. Though Microsoft still enjoys a near-monopoly on the PC desktop, it doesn’t enjoy the same ubiquity in the browser. Hence, Apple users complained about missing features that were available to Windows users and compatibility problems with Safari 4. Developers also complained that Silverlight had too many limitations compared to WPF and often ended up having to maintain two separate code bases.

Silverlight also produces blurry text for small print, a major issue for a newspaper. Though the problem has been known since 2006, Microsoft has done little to fix it:

It is clear that our text rendering is not clear enough in many scenarios. Unfortunately, the other design considerations make solving this problem very difficult. We are investigating our options, but we have not found any good solution yet.

The lesson here for Microsoft is that it can no longer rely on its monopoly for customers to forgive its cross-platform limitations and buggy software. With strong competition from Adobe AIR, Google Gears, and other open source solutions, Microsoft must learn to play nice in a multi-platform world that demands better quality and faster resolution of known problems.

(Original Story)

Silverlight Benched in a Flash by Major League Customer

timm — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 14:32:29 +0000

Major League Baseball handed Microsoft some very bad news by reverting back to the Adobe Flash player after just one year with Microsoft’s Silverlight browser plug-in. This season, baseball fans will watch live and on-demand video at MLB.com via the Flash player. MLB.com offers the Web’s most successful subscription service with over 500,000 subscribers.

The trouble started last November when Major League Baseball Advanced Media (MLBAM) — the league’s technical group — announced it would discontinue using Silverlight after less than a year. The decision has impact far beyond baseball, as MLBAM also handles CBS’ webcasts of the NCAA Basketball Tournament and the 2009 Masters golf tournament.

As reported by CNET, sources close to the negotiations between the MLB and Microsoft said a series of glitches and conflicts between the companies led to the split. First, baseball wanted users to be able to download and install Silverlight without administrative rights so people could watch baseball at work. Second, MLB considered Silverlight unstable. For example, on opening day last year, many MLB.com subscribers couldn’t login or watch games due to Silverlight malfunctions that lasted several days.

Microsoft declined to comment but pointed out that other major sporting events have used Silverlight, including NBC’s webcast of the 2008 Summer Olympic Games and CBS’s online presentation of the NCAA basketball tournament. NBC recently announced that it will broadcast the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver using Silverlight.

When CNET asked MLBAM CEO Bob Bowman, “What did you see in Flash that impressed you?” he responded with a series of thinly-veiled digs at Microsoft:

“You see several things. You see a high-grade product that’s in some form on 99 percent of the browsers. You’ve got something that’s got mass usage. Secondly you see with Adobe a company committed to the customer experience in video with the Flash Player. We see a partner that continues to invest in their product. They have the same desire that we do. They want the Flash Player to be the best thing anybody has ever seen and we want that. When you partner with people like that, it’s not a philosophical discussion. We know where we want to be now how do we get there.”