Microsoft new definition of Flash: “Silverlight”

Well, this is the Windows Presentation Foundation Everywhere (WPF/e) and a huge take off for Adobe Flash. Originally can run on a subset XAML but as released last April 30, 2007, the following were added.

Announcement Highlights:

1. Inclusion of mini-CLR which is part of the .Net Framework. The mini-CLR is now supporting C#, JavaScript (ECMA 3.0), VB, Python and Ruby.
2. Cross browser support. That means not just IE also both Firefox and Safari, and the team are also working interoperability on the Mac OSX platform.
3. Strong support to multimedia like videos, DVD and other offline content. Their demos were extremely fast. Video editing on the fly were genius and its way greater than AJAX.
4. Silverlight Streaming were also up for the said release. Microsoft allows users to host their Silverlight content and applications to this service for free.
5. Support on mobile devices.

Excellent comparisons to rival Flash together with full featured .Net 3.0 are tabulated here.

Features/Benefits	Silverlight	.Net 3.0	Flash/Flex
Rich 2D animation/graphics with audio and video	x	x	x
Industry standard video codec	x	x
Scalable video format from HD to mobile	x	x
Hardware-assisted editing and encoding solutions	x	x
XML (XAML)-based presentation layer for SEO	x
Choice of standards-based and high-performance languages	x	x
End-to-end server and application platform	x	x
Media server licensing (unlimited bandwidth)	$999	$999	$4500
Content access protection (DRM)	x	x
Client side play lists for ad-insertion	x	x	x
Robust video publishing tools and 3rd party ecosystem	x	x
High-performance, multi-core enabled client	x	x
Scalable full screen video up to HD (720p)	x	x
Native support for device-based video	x	x
Offline, document support		x
Client size	2MB	50MB	2MB
Supported operating systems	Windows /Mac	Windows	Windows/ Mac/Linux

Source: MSDN BLOGS

Demos are located here ( interactive ) and here( pictures only ).

Word of mouth from blogosphere about Silverlight

1. “Fast, very, very fast.” - Nik Cubrilovic – A blogger at www.nik.com.au and he is the CEO of Omnidrive.
2. “The engineering behind this is stunning.” - Steve Gilmore - A Microsoft hater.
3. “Microsoft ‘rebooted the web.’” - Robert Scoble, an ex Softie who evangelizes MS products. He is notable of criticizing Microsoft and praising Google and other MS rivals. Current Vice President Media Development of PodTech.net.
4. A silly question (I thought) was asked to Scott Guthrie by Robert Scoble, “Would Google use it?” Well Guthrie says, “They have to in some point.”

If you are interested playing around, get SDK here. I think entrepreneurs should take a look in this new technology that turns web even richer. For more information, you can visit the official site at www.silverlight.net.