Just What Is Silverlight

Silverlight is a software application created by Microsoft, an effective way to illustrate it to you, will be to liken it to Adobe Flash. Silverlight in characteristics and purpose is much like Adobe Flash.

Microsoft by themselves explain their product 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 first the focus was greatly about producing rich and engaging user experiences through rich media, streaming and animation allowing web programmers to create really engaging and interactive sites, the same as with Flash.

Nevertheless what lots of people are not aware of is how much Silverlight now features a lot more for business application development and just how in fact, Silverlight is currently being frequently used for additional purposes over and above merely engaging content.

The fact is Silverlight is now being utilized within business for data management, CRM and a lot of other business critical operations, in a nutshell, a growing number of business applications are making use of Silverlight to assist business demands.

A business application carries a very precise purpose or goal, and generally assists a corporation 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 software expect rich, functional, and well-performing user interfaces similar to those typically provided 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, you can now rapidly create this type of application and enjoy the benefits of Web delivery and deployment.

So just what is Silverlight and also how does it work? As stated above Silverlight is a software application from Microsoft for making appealing content akin to Adobe Flash, however it is even more than Flash and will also be used in business application development.

Silverlight is a completely free software which comes in a browser plug-in format, there isn't a need to download it as an application on your C drive plus its as a result very small and self-contained.

Silverlight might be run in all of the primary browsers including Mozilla, Firefox, Apple Safari, Opera, and Internet Explorer of course, and it is platform independent and operates by displaying a programming framework that is a subset of the .Net Framework.

To install Silverlight you may download it straight from the Microsoft website and download it to your computer as a plug-in. You can think of this plug-in as a scaled down form of the .Net framework as it only has the classes and functionality that's applicable to a Silverlight web client.

Due to this fact, you can actually write real, compiled and managed code that's completed in the context of the client browser itself. Finally, Silverlight employs XAML (Extensible Application Markup Language) to make the user interface.

Silverlight programs may be developed in any .NET programming language. Because of this, any development tools that may be used with .NET languages can function with Silverlight. If you happen to be dealing with Silverlight and XML, you can also readily XML Silverlight tool similar to Liquid XML studio.