Embed this Program Add this Program to your website by copying the code below. Preview Preview. Although Microsoft's Silverlight was originally conceived as a competitor to Adobe Flash, it now finds itself competing with Abobe's Web 2.0 platform, Adobe Air. The harsh truth is, Microsoft Silverlight has already fallen considerably behind Adobe Air and typical for a Microsoft product on Mac, it's prone to bugs. In typically Microsoft style, the software giant has surely missed the boat by aiming at a replacement for Adobe Flash when the web world was already shifting towards interactive Web 2.0 platforms such as Adobe Air. Microsoft Silverlight is a lightweight plug-in that allows you to watch Silverlight-based content in your browser.
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It works with most major browsers, including Firefox and Safari. There is no prompt to restart the browser after installation but I recommend you do so because the first site of Silverlight content I accessed after installation simply crashed the browser. The most important improvements to the latest version of Microsoft Silverlight are smoother streaming, DRM management, and an out-of browser player. The out-of browser player however is dependent on developers embracing it and as yet, there are few examples available. The smooth streaming feature will iron out many of the streaming problems that have plagued Silverlight in the past.
If your bandwidth drops below 3Mbps, smooth streaming will kick-in so that your video isn't affected. Microsoft Silverlight can stream high-resolution video well and supports HD-quality videos. If you want to create content for Silverlight, you'll need Expression Studio and Visual Studio. In fact, this latest release is is of particular interest to developers because it adds 60 customizable controls, new layout containers, 'deep linking' for page bookmarking, search engine optimization, and enhanced data support.
The signs are, however, that Microsoft has already realized that the battle for web content is being won by the much slicker and more stable Adobe Air platform, and is therefore aiming Silverlight at business users. The Silverlight homepage boasts: 'Learn how Silverlight is right for your business'. It points out that companies such as Continental Airlines have adopted Microsoft Silverlight for use in their reservation system showing that Microsoft knows which side its bread is buttered on. Microsoft Silverlight has probably missed the boat as far as Web 2.0 goes, although there's probably no way Mac users can avoid it since there will always be some websites that opt to stream content with Silverlight rather than Flash.
By Anonymous Complete waste of time; Absolutely useless. Recently changed from Windows to Mac and had never experienced any p. Complete waste of time; Absolutely useless. Recently changed from Windows to Mac and had never experienced any problems with Silverlight. However, since I started using the Mac, Silverlight has been nothing short of terrible for me. I only downloaded it to work on the Sky Go service, and it simply doesn't work; you can watch roughly 5 minutes of a film and then it crashes. Terribly frustrating, and overall one of the most irritating pieces of software i've encountered Pros: It allows me to revise for exams, as It doesn't let me procrastinate by watching films (because it doesn't work) Cons: Making it work for Netflix and SkyGo would be a start reviewed on May 7, 2013.
Contents. Silverlight 1 Silverlight 1, which was developed under the codename Windows Presentation Foundation/Everywhere (WPF/E) and released in 2007, consists of the core presentation framework, which is responsible for the UI , interactivity and user input, basic UI controls, graphics and animation, media playback, (DRM), and integration. It is made up of the following components:. Input—handling input from devices like keyboard, mouse, stylus etc.
UI core—managing rendering of bitmap images (including compressed raster images like ), vector graphics, text and animations. Media—playback of MP3, WMA Standard, WMV7, WMV8 and WMV9/VC-1 streams. XAML—to allow the UI layout to be created using XAML markup language. A Silverlight application starts by invoking the Silverlight control from the page, which then loads up a XAML file.
The XAML file contains a Canvas object, which acts as a container for other elements. Silverlight provides various geometrical primitives like lines, ellipses and other shapes, to elements like text, images, and media, etc. The elements are properly positioned to achieve the desired layout. Any arbitrary shape can be created as well. These elements can be animated using Event triggers; some animation effects are predefined, others can be created as composite of the pre-defined effects. Events like keyboard or mouse movements can also raise Events which can be handled by custom scripts.
Programmatic manipulation of the UI is achieved by using scripting languages to modify the Document Object Model of the Silverlight Canvas object. To facilitate this, Silverlight exposes a DOM, accessible from any scripting language supported by Silverlight, which in version 1 release is limited to running in the browser. However, there are no built in. The native widgets of the browser must be overlaid on top of the Silverlight Canvas for user input.
Support for data formats is limited to XML and only. Silverlight 2 Silverlight 2 (previously referred to as version 1.1) includes a version of the, implementing the same full (CLR) version as.NET Framework 3.0; so it can execute programs written in any.NET language.
(By default, however, reference assemblies compiled with the regular.NET Framework cannot be referenced. ) Unlike the CLR included with.NET Framework version 3.5 and earlier, but like.NET Framework 4.0, the CoreCLR instance included in Silverlight can be hosted with another instance of one of the desktop CLRs in one single process.
With this, the XAML layout markup file (.xaml file) can be augmented by code, written in any.NET language, which contains the programming logic. It can be used to programmatically manipulate both the Silverlight application and the HTML page which hosts the Silverlight control. The XAML markup, as well as the code, is compiled into which are then compressed using and stored in a.xap file.
Silverlight ships with a lightweight class library which includes features such as extensible, components and (LINQ) APIs. This class library is a subset of, and is considerably smaller than,.NET Framework's (BCL).
Silverlight code runs in a, thus preventing the invocation of platform APIs. Silverlight 2 Architecture The version of.NET Framework in Silverlight adds a subset of (WPF) UI-programming model, including support for shapes, documents, media and animation objects of WPF. Beta 2 onwards, it ships with more than 30 UI controls (including TextBox, CheckBox, Slider, ScrollViewer, and Calendar controls), for two-way databinding support, automated layout management (by means of StackPanel, Grid, etc.) as well as data-manipulation controls, such as and ListBox. UI controls are skinnable using a template-based approach.
Third-party libraries of expanded UI-control sets are also available. The included BCL provides classes for,. It also supports LINQ, with full support for LINQ to Objects.
Almost all of the System.Linq and System.Linq.Expression namespaces are exposed. It also supports of objects, for. Silverlight can handle data in or JSON format, in addition to XML. The BCL provides enhanced support for working with XML data, including the XMLReader and XMLWriter classes.
Silverlight 2 also supports asynchronous programming via the use of the threading libraries. Silverlight also includes classes for over web services, (WCF) Services. The networking support in Silverlight can be used by Silverlight applications to communicate using, or at the lower level. Cross-domain communication is supported. Silverlight uses an XML-based configuration file to control the cross-domain resource-access policy, for both HTTP and socket connections.
It can be used by site administrators to control which resources a Silverlight application can access, when that application did not originate in the domain of the site. In addition, Silverlight also supports the Cross-domain policy file format. Silverlight sockets can only initiate a connection; they cannot listen for connections. Silverlight 2 includes the (DLR) which allows dynamic compilation and execution of dynamic (scripting) languages. Compilers for the languages based on the DLR (including IronPython and IronRuby) are to be? packaged with the Dynamic Languages application in the.xap package. The Dynamic Languages includes a named, that can dynamically package all the dependencies for the Dynamic Languages application and serve it to the browser.
The first upcoming languages written for the DLR are Managed, IronPython 2.0, and IronRuby. Microsoft also plans to build on the DLR. All four languages share the same infrastructure, to allow Silverlight to compile and execute the language source. Conversely, other.NET languages must be compiled ahead-of-time and delivered to Silverlight as.NET assemblies. The implementation of Managed JScript conforms to the 3.0 specification, and Microsoft asserts that it is 250 times faster than interpreted JScript. With the integration of.NET Framework, Silverlight also allows HTML- interaction, which enables the manipulation of HTML DOM elements from, and permits JavaScript code to call managed code and use objects instantiated by managed code.
Silverlight encloses JavaScript objects and DOM elements in managed wrappers to make them available from managed code. While there is no provision for calling JavaScript code directly in the 1.1 alpha release, managed-code events can fire JavaScript handlers. A Silverlight instance does not need to have a UI component in order to manipulate the HTML DOM from managed code. It is done by creating a XAML Canvas with both width and height set to zero, and using its code-behind code to modify the DOM of the HTML page via the APIs in the System.Browser namespace.
Silverlight 2 includes, a technology derived from '. 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 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. Beta 2 onwards, Deep Zoom uses an XML-based file format. Media features in Silverlight 2 include:. WMA Professional support, including WMA 10 Pro low-bitrate modes.
However, multi-channel audio content is still down-converted to stereo output. Content protection powered by Microsoft DRM client. Server-side playlists in Windows Media Services.
Media Stream Source API. The Media Stream Source is the API responsible for enabling adaptive streaming of media. Adaptive streaming allows the player application to choose the bit rate of the media based on available client bandwidth and (CPU) resources. Media Stream Source allows the developer to specify a custom method of retrieving media data, the only requirement being that the final video and audio streams be presented to Silverlight runtime in a format that Silverlight can decode (VC-1, H.264, WMA, MP3, etc.). This allows extensible support for otherwise natively unsupported file formats (i.e., ), protocols (i.e. ) and delivery methods (i.e. Adaptive streaming, (P2P)).
Microsoft first publicly showcased Media Stream Source by powering the website with their own implementation of adaptive streaming. Silverlight 2 also allows limited filesystem 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 file is sanitized of path information, to prevent the application from getting access to information such as user name, and can be opened only in read-only mode. For local storage of data, Silverlight provides isolated local storage (isostorage), namely, outside the browser cache, in a folder hidden inside the private user-profile folder.
It is set to 1 per URL by default, but this can be changed by the user. Data stored by a Silverlight application in the isostorage is identified by the URL from which it loads, and can be accessed by that application only. All instances of Silverlight share the same isostorage, so all instances of the same Silverlight application can share the saved data, even if they are running on different browsers. Silverlight CoreCLR uses an attribute-based security model, as opposed to the (CAS) model of the desktop version of.NET Framework. Assemblies are marked with a security attribute, which can be transparent ( SecurityTransparentAttribute), safecritical ( SecuritySafeCriticalAttribute) or critical ( SecurityCriticalAttribute). Methods in transparent assemblies run with partial trust, and codes within such assemblies cannot call critical methods (methods which can cause system-wide changes); neither can transparent assemblies contain unverifiable code (use the unsafe keyword or use ) or invoke system functions by means of P/Invoke. Code in both critical and safecritical assemblies run with full trust, and are therefore not subject to such limitations.
However, a transparent method can call a safecritical method, and a safecritical method can call a critical method. In such a case, the safecritical method will verify that the call is both safe and within the limited rights of the caller; if so, then the safecritical method will the call to the requested critical method. In fact, the IsoStorage APIs are exposed as safecritical methods. An assembly whose security attribute is unset is run as a transparent method. Analogous limitations also apply to type-inheritance; namely, in the cases of virtual-method calls and interface-method calls.
Silverlight assemblies can contain members that are not usable by CoreCLR, as long as they can be processed by the.NET Framework CLR; such methods will not be loaded when the assembly is being executed by CoreCLR. However, only platform code is allowed to be marked as critical or safecritical. The Silverlight runtime ensures that platform assemblies are loaded only from the Silverlight installation directory, and are by Microsoft. This effectively means that user-application assemblies can only be transparent code (run under partial trust and limited rights). Platform code can be marked with either attribute. The BCL methods of the.NET Framework, which have the Internet attribute set, allowing them to be called from untrusted code originating from the Internet, are exposed in Silverlight BCL as transparent methods. Silverlight 3 Silverlight 3 was announced at the (IBC) 2008 show in on September 12, 2008.
It was unveiled at in on March 18, 2009. A beta version was made available for download the same day.
The final version was released July 9, 2009. Silverlight 3 includes an increased number of controls —including DataGrid, TreeView, various layout panels, DataForm for forms-driven applications and DataPager for viewing paginated data. Some of these controls are from the. In addition, Silverlight 3 includes a navigation framework to let Silverlight applications use the navigation model as well as enabling (linking directly to specific pages) within Silverlight applications. On the media front, Silverlight 3 supports (AAC) audio decoding as well as hardware-accelerated H.264 video decoding.
Silverlight 3 also offers smooth streaming. The native multimedia pipeline is also programmatically exposed, so that other formats can also be supported by third parties using decoders. Silverlight 3 supports perspective 3D which enables 3D transformations of 2D elements. These transformations, as well as many 2D operations like stretches, alpha blending etc. Are hardware accelerated. Custom animations, including transforms and blends, can be created on Silverlight elements using (HLSL) to make use of. A API is provided to let Silverlight 3 applications manipulate bitmaps.
Silverlight now uses the (GPU) to accelerate the composition of Visual Trees (like WPF, Silverlight elements correspond to Visual elements, which, when coupled with the layout information, forms a Composition Tree or Visual Tree which is then rendered to form the final display; see ). Visual trees can now be cached; this increases performance in cases like transforms, which creates lots of throw-away intermediate states, by not making the state transitions on the main Visual tree. Silverlight 3 now also supports text rendering. UI elements in Silverlight 3 supports element-to-element binding—which allows one element to be bound to the state of another element, as well as a validation mechanism for data binding. Unlike Silverlight 2, which allowed the applications to save files only to the local isostorage, Silverlight 3 applications can save to any location on the file system via the system Save File dialog.
However, the path where the file is saved will still be hidden from the Silverlight application. Any external assemblies used by Silverlight applications are cached too so that they need not be redownloaded for subsequent instantiations of the application. Silverlight 3 also includes a LocalConnection API to communicate (using a style model) among multiple running applications on the same machine, irrespective of the browser and can monitor for network connectivity events. Silverlight 3 can optionally use to communicate with WCF services. Silverlight 3 supports Out-of-Browser experiences, i.e., Silverlight applications can be installed to the system for offline access (provided the application is designed to allow local installation) where they run outside the browser. They are launched using the or desktop shortcuts, and run without the browser window.
Applications can check whether they are running inside a browser or not. When running outside of a browser, HTML interop is disabled.
In addition, access to the is enabled. Locally installed Silverlight applications still run in a. Installed Silverlight 3 applications automatically check for updates asynchronously on every launch and updates are automatically installed. Running instances of the applications are informed when updates are available. Silverlight 3 is now listed as a requirement for eFiling income tax returns for free in the US. Silverlight 4 On November 18, 2009, at the in Los Angeles, Microsoft Corporation unveiled a version of Silverlight 4.
The final version was released on April 15, 2010 (along with ). New features in Silverlight 4 include:. Support for browser. Web cam and microphone support.
Printing support. Improved mouse support including right button support and mouse wheel support. New notification support to display messages to end users. New and enhanced controls such as a RichTextBox and an enhanced DataGrid control. New support for implicit theming of controls. New hosted browser support for rendering HTML inside Silverlight. WCF data layer enhancements.
Localization enhancements with bi-directional text. Support for. Enhanced data binding support. Enhanced animation effects. Clipboard and drag and drop support. performance enhancements.
WCF (RIA) Services. Content protection for H.264 and support for playing offline DRM protected media. Additionally, the following features are provided to out-of-browser (locally installed) Silverlight applications that have been explicitly granted 'trusted' status:. Full keyboard access while running in full screen mode. Programmatic access to a user's local document folder. Support for local (COM) objects. Silverlight 5 On December 2, 2010 at the Silverlight Firestarter event, Silverlight 5 beta was announced for release in the 1st half of 2011.
The final version was released on December 9, 2011. New features in Silverlight 5 include:. Supports GPU accelerated video 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 breakpoints on bindings. WCF RIA Services improvements include complex type support and better MVVM support.
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on Microsoft.com. on. Step by step in Silverlight 5, lots of demos and samples available.