Basking in the Glow

Ray Ozzie, chief software architect, Microsoft declared the availability of
the first beta version of Silverlight 1.0. MIX 07 at the recently held web
developer conference in Las Vegas. Both the Silverlight 1.0 Beta and Silverlight
1.1 Alpha are immediately available for download at the Microsoft Silverlight
Web site. Silverlight is essentially a cross-browser, web-based version of
Microsoft's Windows Presentation Foundation, the user-interface framework in
Windows Vista.

Microsoft Silverlight, previously codenamed Windows Presentation Foundation
Everywhere (WPF/E), integrates with existing Web technologies and assets to
provide higher-quality experiences with lower costs for media delivery.
Delivered to end users through a seamless, fast installation, Silverlight offers
consistent experiences to both Macintosh and Windows users on a variety of
browsers including the Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari.

Considered by many as Microsoft's competing product for Adobe's Flash Player,
a popular method that is used by developers to add multimedia to websites,
Microsoft officials refute the charge.

According to Ozzie, "Silverlight is targeted at the universal Web. It is a
cross platform, cross browser plug-in that will give you high quality output and
will make the coding part easier. Silverlight will allow designers and
developers to add high-resolution, high-quality animation and video to the
websites."

Her further added: "Developers these days face tough choices because of the
richness of technologies that are available. Technology also brings with it
architectural and infrastructural drawbacks. We are increasingly becoming a
world where the universal Web-that is html, Ajax, flash-come together to make
user applications. SaaS as a concept has also changed, it is now not software as
a service but software and service. It is no longer an either or world but a
world where both co-exist. Even SaaS providers have found the need to expand
offerings to include an offline edition. While the first version meant
only the Web, the second version of SaaS has come to embrace the unique value of
the client as well."

At the keynote some leading media companies endorsed Silverlight, vouching
for its dependability and ease of use. Neil Hunt, chief product officer, Netflix
said, "We are leading the way for people to rent movies for instant viewing over
the Internet. With 6.3 mn members and growing, Netflix needs rapid scalability
so that our members can enjoy DVD-quality movies on our instant-viewing feature.
We depend on Microsoft Windows Media technologies, and are excited about
Microsoft Silverlight as a platform to enable instant watching of great content
for all our members, on multiple platforms."

Paul Sagan, president and CEO, Akamai, said, "Silverlight represents a
significant leap forward for customers looking for cost-effective rich media
solutions with assured application delivery, using Windows Media technologies.
We agree that facilitating a standard way to distribute rich media is in the
industry's best interest, and will be releasing tools in support of the
Silverlight initiative to work hand in hand with our new Stream OS media
management solution."

Shivangi Yadav

maildqindia@cybermedia.co.in

The author was hosted in Las Vegas