Introduction to Silverlight

Mahender Sarangam
Having close to 5 years of experience. Working as a Senior Software Engineer in United Health Group. Good Knowledge on C#, ASP.NET, Silverlight, WPF ,SQL Server, Team Foundation Server(TFS) and SharePoint Technology.

What is Silverlight?

Microsoft Silverlight is an application framework for writing and running browser plug-ins or other rich Internet application, with features and purposes similar to those of Adobe Flash. Silverlight aims to give .NET developers a better option for creating rich web content. Silverlight runs on top of compact .NET framework. It natively supports the VB .NET/VC# language and uses a range of .NET concepts. As a result, developers can write client- side code for Silverlight in the same language they use for server- side code (such as VB and C#), and use many of the same abstractions (including streams, controls, collections, generics, and LINQ).

It can run in most of the popular browsers like Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Safari etc. Silverlight can run in various devices and operating systems like Windows, Apple Mac OS-X and Windows Phone 7. Using Silverlight you can create rich, visually stunning web applications like flash. Also you can create smooth animations using Storyboards; you can stream media over the net etc Top Banana is one of the first Silverlight applications developed using managed code, C#, Visual Studio and Microsoft Expression

Features:

It is a cross-browser, cross-platform technology. It runs in all popular modern web browsers. It provides a consistent experience no matter where it runs. It is supported by a very small download that installs in seconds. It includes compelling graphics that users can manipulate drag, turn, and zoomdirectly in the browser. It reads data and updates the display, but it doesn't interrupt the user by refreshing the whole page.

Technical differences between Flash and Silverlight

Animation

Flash uses the frame-based animation model Silverlight is based on the WPF animation model, which is time-based instead of frame-based

File Size
Flash uses a compressed format, and text and images are embedded in the movie Silverlight uses XAML for its description language, and it is non-compressed, so the size of a Silverlight component is usually larger

Scripting
Action Script is used to program Flash objects you can choose from among a number of programming languages such as Visual C#.Net and Visual Basic .NET, including client-side scripting with JavaScript

Video And Audio

Video And Audio

Flash supports multiple video formats

Silverlight implements the industry-standard VC-1 codec for video, and supports WMV and WMA

Text Representation/SEO

Flash stores fonts using shape definitions and the player doesnt understand TTF

Debugging

No debugging capability in flash ,Debugging facility in Silverlight

Service Support

Silverlight supports communication with web services or WCF services,but in flash no support for web service

Features Flash Animation File size better Scripting Video/Audio Sound processing Accessibility better Platform compatibility Text Representation/SEO Supported image formats Socket programming better Webcam support Deployment better Windows application Media streaming

Silverlight better better better better better better better

better
better better

System Requirements for Silverlight?

MINIMUM SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS FOR INSTALLING SILVERLIGHT PLUG-IN IS AS FOLLOWS:

PC Type

Processor

RAM 128 MB

Operating System Windows XP

Windows PC 500 MHz or higher, SP2+ X86 or x64 bit processor Mac Power PC / PowerPC G4 800 MHz or higher 10.4.8 or higher Mac Intel-based Intel Core Duo higher

128 MB

Mac

1.83 GHz or higher

128 MB

Mac 10.4.8 or

How Silverlight would change the Web

Highest Quality Video Experience. Cross-Platform, Cross-Browser. Developers and Graphic Designers work together: Developers familiar with Visual Studio, Microsoft.net will

be able to develop amazing Silverlight applications very quickly. So developer can strictly focus on the back end of the application core, while leaving the visuals to the Graphic Design team using the power of XAML.

Cheaper: Silverlight is now the most inexpensive way to stream

video files over the internet at the best quality possible. All we need IIS in Windows Server.

Support for 3rd Party Languages: Speed: There is a very good improvement in speed for AJAX-enabled
websites that begin to use Silverlight, leveraging the Microsoft .NET framework

Silverlight Versions

Silverlight Version 1.0

Silverlight 1.0 is very good at displaying Media (audio and video) but it's lack of controls and reliance on JavaScript as the only programming language, introduce numerous limitations.

Main features of Silverlight 1.0:

Built-in codec support for playing WMV video, and MP3 and WMA audio within a browser. Silverlight supports the ability to progressively download and play media content from any web-server. Silverlight also optionally supports built-in media streaming. Silverlight enables you to create rich UI and animations, and blend vector graphics with HTML to create compelling content experiences.

Silverlight 2.0 Version

Silverlight 2 introduces the .NET framework to Silverlight with the support of DLR and rich control set.

Main features of Silverlight 2.0:

Includes a version of the .NET Framework, with the full Common Language Runtime as .NET Framework 3.0; A built in CLR engine which delivers a super high performance execution environment for the browser. Silverlight 2 includes Deep Zoom. It allows users to zoom into, or out of, an image (or a collage of images), with smooth transitions, using the mouse wheel. The images can scale from 2 or 3 megapixels in resolution into the gigapixel range, but the user need not wait for it to be downloaded entirely; rather, Silverlight downloads only the parts in view, optimized for the zoom level being viewed. Silverlight 2 also allows limited file system access to Silverlight applications. It can use the operating system's native file dialog box to browse to any file to which the user has access. The XAML layout markup file (.xaml file) can be augmented by code-behind code, written in any .NET language, which contains the programming logic. This version ships with more than 30 UI controls (including TextBox, CheckBox, Slider, ScrollViewer, and Calendar controls), for two-way databinding support, automated layout management as well as data-manipulation controls, such as DataGrid and ListBox.

Silverlight Version 3.0

This version represents a maturation of the platform instead of the complete change in platform that Silverlight 2 represented
Silverlight is already great solution for supporting various media scenarios but we will see support for H.264 video in Silverlight 3

Major media enhancements

Major graphics improvement Major developer Experience improvements Running Silverlight 3 applications outside of browser, as stand-alone desktop applications Performance Improvements Styling (support of Merge Resource Dictionary)

Silverlight 4.0

Silverlight 4 provides a great tool for designers and developers to build cutting edge applications with awesome multimedia and graphics. It has excellent support for printing, rich reporting and charting, support for web camera and microphone, support for COM automation, support for local file access, support for new languages, rich text editing, and, improved support for data binding like target null values, fall back values, ability to have string format, Binding to string indexers and support for complex ,multi property validation of data object. Silverlight 4 is amazingly feature rich and its evolution will increase the demand for building LOB applications using Silverlight 4. Silverlight now enables applications to remain in full-screen mode when another application is active Implicit Style for Silverlight Right Mouse Click event, Right to Left flow direction, Multiple Transforms Multi casting ,DRM for offline, Web Cam and Microphone support View Box control, Web Browser, web browser brush and Clip Board object access

Silverlight 5

On December 2, 2010 at the Silverlight Fire starter event, Silverlight 5 beta was announced for release in the 1st half of 2011. The final release is planned for the end of 2011. New features in Silverlight 5 include:

Supports GPU accelerated video decoding instead of CPU decoding Built-in 3D graphics support Variable speed playback of media content with automatic audio pitch correction Improved power awareness Built-in remote-control support Supports faster application startup Provides 64-bit browser support Automated UI testing support for applications with Visual Studio 2010 Delivers improved text clarity Developers can now debug data-binding expressions, set

HTML 5 and Silverlight

First and foremost, it will take few more years for HTML5 to be standardized There is no IDE to create HTML5 Web applications JavaScript only language of coding Rich animations and effects will have performance issues in HTML5 canvas or in SVG Video tag in HTML5 allows you to play videos Uniform look and feel Security aspect Debugging Aspect

References
http://timheuer.com/blog/archive/2009/03/1 8/silverlight-3-whats-new-aguide.aspx#textimage http://www.silverlight.net/learn/handsonlab s/

THANK YOU