Silverlight Basic Tutorials

What is Silverlight?

Various Definitions from the internet:      

1. Microsoft Silverlight is a web application framework that integrates multimedia, computer graphics, animation and interactivity into a single runtime environment.

2. Silverlight is a new cross-browser, cross-platform implementation of the .NET Framework for building and delivering the next generation of media experiences and Rich Interactive Applications (RIA) for the web. It runs in all popular browsers, including Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, and Opera. 

The plug-in required to run Silverlight is very small in size hence gets installed very quickly.

3. A web browser plug-in that provides support for rich internet applications such as animation, vector graphics and audio/video playback. Silverlight competes with companies such as Adobe Flash, Adobe Flex, Adobe AIR, Adobe Shockwave, JavaFX, and Apple QuickTime. 

4. Like Flash but made by Microsoft instead of Adobe.

5. Silverlight is the new Microsoft technology on web platform for Rich Internet Applications (RIA) launched by Microsoft in 2007

Advantages of using Silverlight Control in SharePoint

 1. Only Silverlight web part is required on the server
 2. Simply Upload to Document Library of SharePoint and new version is loaded on the next page refresh
 3. No IIS Reset is necessary
 4. Debugging can be done locally on the development machine 

Demerits of using Silverlight Control

1. Only Silverlight dlls and SharePoint Object Model dlls can be used or any dlls that is not supported by Silverlight cannot be directly used in the control
2. End users must have the ability to install the Silverlight or they should have already installed it before

Development Tools
 1. Visual Studio 2008 & Visual Studio 2010 with Silverlight SDK installed
 2. Microsoft Expression Blend