Microsoft Silverlight (or just Silverlight ) is an unused application framework for writing and running rich Internet applications, similar to Adobe Flash. The plugin for Silverlight is still available for some browsers. While the early versions of Silverlight focused on streaming media, the newer versions support multimedia, graphics, and animation and provide developers support for CLI languages ​​and development tools. Silverlight is also one of two application development platforms for Windows Phone, but web pages that use Silverlight do not run on Windows Phone or Windows Mobile versions of Internet Explorer, as there is no Silverlight plugin for Internet Explorer on that platform.
Microsoft announces the end of the life of Silverlight 5 in 2012. In 2013, Microsoft announced that it has suspended Silverlight development except for patches and bug fixes. Microsoft has set a support end date for Silverlight 5 to October 2021. It has not been supported in Google Chrome since September 2015, and in Firefox since March 2017. No Silverlight plugin is available for Microsoft Edge.
Silverlight is used to provide streaming video for NBC coverage of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, and the 2008 convention for both major US political parties. Silverlight is also used by Amazon Video and Netflix for their instant video streaming services, but Netflix said at Tech Blog in 2013 that, since Microsoft announced the end of Silverlight, they will move to HTML5 video.
Video Microsoft Silverlight
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Silverlight provides a preserved graphics system similar to Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), and integrates multimedia, graphics, animation, and interactivity into a single run-time environment. In Silverlight applications, the user interface is declared in Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML) and programmed using a subset of the.NET Framework. XAML can be used to mark vector and animation graphs. Silverlight can also be used to create Windows Sidebar gadgets for Windows Vista.
Silverlight supports H.264 video, Advanced Audio Coding, Windows Media Video (WMV), Windows Media Audio (WMA), and MPEG Layer III (MP3) media content across all supported browsers without requiring Windows Media Player, ActiveX controls Windows Media Player , or Windows Media browser plug-in. Because Windows Media Video 9 is an implementation of the VC-1 Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) standard, Silverlight also supports VC-1 video. Under the end-user license agreement, VC-1 and H.264 are only licensed for "personal and non-commercial use of consumers". Silverlight makes it possible to load dynamically-expanded Extensible Markup Language (XML) content that can be manipulated through the Document Object Model (DOM) interface, a technique consistent with conventional Ajax techniques. Silverlight exposes a Downloader object that can be used to download content, such as scripts, media assets, or other data that may be required by the application. With version 2, programming logic can be written in.NET languages, including some derivatives of common dynamic programming languages ​​such as IronRuby and IronPython.
The free software implementation (now dormant) named Moonlight, developed by Novell in collaboration with Microsoft, was released to bring the functionality of Silverlight versions 1 and 2 to Linux, FreeBSD, and other open source platforms, although some Linux distributions do not include it, citing redistribution and problems patent. However, in May 2012, Moonlight was abandoned due to lack of popularity.
Maps Microsoft Silverlight
Adoption
According to statowl.com, Microsoft Silverlight has 64.2% penetration in May 2011. Use in July 2010 was 53.6%, while market leader in May 2011 Adobe Flash installed in 95.3% browser, and Java supported at 76.5 % of the browser. Support from this plugin is not mutually exclusive; one system can support all three. Not all websites require a browser plugin; as of February 2018, less than 0.1% of sites used by Silverlight, 5.3% using Adobe Flash, and 2.4% using Java.
Supported platforms
For about five years Microsoft released five versions with various platform support: The first version was released in 2007; and the fifth (and final) major version on May 8, 2012. This is compatible with newer versions of the Internet Explorer web browser on Microsoft Windows operating systems (except Windows RT), with Safari on Apple macOS, and with mobile devices using Windows Platform Mobile and Symbian (Series 60).
The Cross Platform Support Mozilla Firefox for Silverlight was removed in Firefox 52 released in March 2017 when Mozilla removed support for the NPAPI plugin, making it in line with the removal of NPAPI plugin support in Google Chrome.
Desktop computer
Silverlight requires an x86 processor with Streaming SIMD Extensions (SSE) support. Supported processors include Intel Pentium III and higher, AMD Athlon XP and higher, and newer AMD Durons.
The following table presents the availability and compatibility of the Silverlight matrix version for various operating systems and web browsers.
Support for Opera was promised since May 3, 2007, when David Storey, Chief Web Opener at Opera, revealed a Microsoft poster for the MIX conference that has demonstrated Opera integration as part of Silverlight 1.1. However, Opera has never been officially supported by Silverlight.
In Linux and FreeBSD, this function is available via Moonlight and Pipelight, although both projects have been discontinued. Moonlight is available for major Linux distributions, with support for Firefox, Konqueror, and Opera browsers, provided it is acquired through Novell. Miguel de Icaza has expressed interest in working with developers from other operating systems (BSD, Solaris) and other browsers (Konqueror, WebKit and Opera) to ensure that Moonlight works well on their systems. The availability of Moonlight version 1.0 for FreeBSD was announced in March 2009, but has since been reported not actually working. In 2011, the current Moonlight version (4 Preview 1) does not officially work on the new version of Firefox (newer than 3.x) on GNU/Linux based operating systems. However, this can be unofficially installed (eg using the Add-on Compatibility Reporter add-on) and with Firefox 11 working correctly when installed. As mentioned above, the Moonlight project was abandoned in May 2012.
A browser plugin named Pipelight is used to provide Silverlight access. Pipelight requires browser support for NPAPI plugins, new versions of Firefox, Chrome, and Opera are down. By 2018, the Pipelight project has been discontinued.
Mobile devices
By 2015, Silverlight is not available on Android or iOS, the most common operating system in the mobile market.
Silverlight is the ultimate development environment for Windows Phone and is based on Silverlight 4. For earlier versions of Windows Mobile, the first Community Technology Preview (CTP) for Windows Mobile 6 is expected in the second quarter of 2008, but is still not officially announced. Microsoft stopped focusing on bringing Silverlight to Windows Mobile 6.x. Nokia announced plans to make Silverlight for Mobile available for S60 on Symbian OS, as well as for Nokia's Series 40 devices and internet tablets (while later selling its business to Microsoft and now selling Android tablets and will sell Alcatel-Lucent branded phones). Silverlight for Mobile supports Silverlight 2 content and.NET languages. Silverlight for Windows Phone 7.5 is based on Silverlight 4.
Development tools
Silverlight applications can be written in.NET programming language. Thus, any development tools that can be used with.NET languages ​​can work with Silverlight, provided they can target Silverlight CoreCLR for hosting applications instead of.NET Framework CLR. Microsoft has positioned Microsoft Expression Blend as a companion tool for Visual Studio to design Silverlight User Interface applications. Visual Studio can be used to develop and debug Silverlight applications. To create a Silverlight project and let the CoreCLR compiler target, Visual Studio requires Silverlight Tools for Visual Studio .
Silverlight control is a ZIP format file with.XAP extension listing one or more. NET managed assemblies (.DLL files) together with AppManifest.XAML file containing this list along with entry points (classes and assembly). It can be hosted in any HTML file using an object tag, for example:
A Silverlight project contains the Silverlight.js and CreateSilverlight.js files that initialize the Silverlight plug-in for use in HTML pages, XAML files for UI, and code-behind files for application code. The Silverlight application is dismantled in a manner similar to ASP.NET applications. The Visual Studio CLR Remote Cross Platform Debugging feature can be used to debug Silverlight applications running on different platforms as well.
Along with the release of Silverlight 2, Eclipse is added as a tool development option.
License
The April 2007 report PC World states that Microsoft intends to release certain parts of the Silverlight source code as open source software, but a week later Sam Ramji, director of platform technology strategy at Microsoft, denied the rumors confirming that the company has no plans to open Silverlight. Some of the controls that are shipped with Silverlight are available under the Microsoft Public License as part of a separate project known as Silverlight Toolkit .
Silverlight's natural nature is a concern for competition because it can harm the open nature of the World Wide Web. Supporters of free software are also worried that Silverlight could be another example of Microsoft's embrace, expanding and extinguishing the strategy. Both Microsoft Silverlight and Adobe Flash are self-owned. The Flash file format is a publicly documented standard, as is Silverlight. Silverlight, like any other web technology, uses a patent-encumbered audio and video codec.
Implementation of Mono Moonlight
The Mono team abandoned the development of Moonlight, an open source and free implementation both from Silverlight 1 and 2 runtime. Development was discontinued in 2012 due to poor reception of Silverlight and restrictions imposed by Microsoft.
The project has been officially endorsed by Microsoft which, under an agreement with Novell, makes additional specifications unavailable in general, access to the Silverlight Base Class Library API, binary codecs, and test cases available to the Mono team.
The "Agreement" in which Novell granted this exclusive access also imposes a provision that does not comply with a license that covers most free and open source software. For example, it is specifically required that the software be "obtained directly from Novell or through the Intermediate Recipient" and that it must be "unlicensed under GPLv3 or Similar License". Some supporters of free software criticize the agreement.
Silverlight has been criticized for failing to meet the promise of cross-platform operating system compatibility, especially on Linux systems, compared to its wide support on Apple and Microsoft desktops for Internet Explorer, Firefox and Chrome. Although Microsoft officially collaborated on the Moonlight project, Bruce Chizen, CEO of Adobe Systems, which sold competing Flash platforms competing, questioned "Microsoft's commitment to keeping the Silverlight platform compatible with OS other than Windows". His worries are based on an "example of history" in which he says that Microsoft has launched the product with ongoing cross platform platform compatibility that is no longer applicable, such as Internet Explorer for UNIX and Windows Media Player for Mac.
Relation to existing web standards
In 2007, California and several other US states asked district judges to extend most of Microsoft's antitrust settlement over the next five years, citing "a number of concerns, including fears that Microsoft could use the next version of Windows to 'tilt the game' towards Silverlight , its new Adobe Flash competitor, "said Seattle Post-Intelligencer article. The final judgment on motion extended the two-year completion, through November 2009, but for reasons unrelated to Silverlight.
History
Silverlight 1, developed under the codename Windows Presentation Foundation/Everywhere (WPF/E) was released in 2007. It consists of a core of frameworks presentation, which is responsible for user interface (UI), user interactivity and input, basic UI control, graphics and animation, media playback, Digital rights management (DRM), and DOM integration.- Silverlight 4 - On November 18, 2009, at the Professional Developer Conference in Los Angeles, Microsoft Corporation released Silverlight 4 Beta version. The latest version was released on April 15, 2010 (along with Silverlight 4 tools for developers). New features in Silverlight 4 include: Support for Google browsers, webcam and microphone, printing, more mouse support, new notification support for sending messages to users, new and improved controls (eg RichTextBox, DataGrid) control themes , HTML rendering, better localization, etc....
- Silverlight 5 - The official release is made available for official download on December 9, 2011. New features include an accelerated GPU video decoder, 3D graphics, playback speed control, remote control, and 64-bit support.
See also
- Adobe Flash
- Adobe AIR
- Microsoft XNA
References
External links
- Official website
- Silverlight Developer Center on MSDN
- What's new in Silverlight 5 - step by step in Silverlight 5, lots of demos and examples available
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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