What is Microsoft Silverlight?
A:
Good question! Silverlight, as described by Microsoft, is: “…a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of .NET based media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web. Silverlight offers a flexible programming model that supports AJAX, VB, C#, Python, and Ruby, and integrates with existing Web applications….”
That, however, makes absolutely no sense to me, so let’s just simplify it by saying that MS Silverlight is basically like Microsoft’s version of Adobe Flash. It was originally developed as a means to deliver presentation-like material quickly and efficiently to your web browser.
Obviously things have advanced from just presentations, because now there are games, applications and productivity software that use Silverlight as their foundation.
Below is an example of a flight simulator that uses maps provided by Bing.com.
If you’re curious, head over to http://silverlight.net/ and check the “Community” section for examples of all the neat things that can be done. I’ve been cruising around there for about half an hour and still haven’t scratched the surface of everything Silverlight can do.
~Andrew
