Silverlight

One of the reasons WPF/E is going to give Flash a real run for it's money is the video story. Unlike Flash, Silverlight (the new name) will support DRM, it supports the industry standard VC-1 codec used in HD-DVD and Blueray, and it can take advantage of the built-in media streaming capabilities of IIS. The video story is better just about any way you look at it with Silverlight as far as content providers are concerned. It's cheaper, it's faster, etc.

Add to that the fact that you get to use C# instead of actionscript as well as use XAML for your UI dev and Adobe should really be pissing their pants right now. Silverlight is so much better than Flash in just about every way. It's about time someone got it right.

http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/

For all of you didn"t noticed the name change of code name WPF/E, it is now Microsft Silverlight. Silverlight is a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of media experiences and rich interactive applications (RIAs) for the Web. Silverlight integrates with existing Web applications and, of course, almost all Web technologies you are already using like Ajax.NET Professional or ASP.NET in common.

The new url for more details of Silverlight: http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/

Read more: Silverlight - The next generation web experiences, Introducing Microsoft Silverlight and Silverlight News.

More blogs about Silverlight

There are a couple of blogs writing about Silverlight (

• Joe Stegman"s WebBlog http://blogs.msdn.com/jstegman/
• Mike Harsh"s Blog http://blogs.msdn.com/mharsh/
• Sean Alexander"s Blog http://www.seanalexander.com/
• Somasegar"s WebLog http://blogs.msdn.com/somasegar/
• Laurence Moroney"s Blog Web.Next http://blogs.msdn.com/webnext/
• Tim Sneath"s Blog http://blogs.msdn.com/tims
• Dave L. Campbell"s Blog http://www.wynapse.com/

My own Google group is available here: http://groups.google.com/group/wpf-everywhere/.

The official name as well as site is now out for Silverlight, which used to be called WPF/E.  Lookin' good!

• http://on10.net/Blogs/tina/out-with-wpfe-in-with-microsoft-silverlight-this-has-just-been-announced/
• http://blogs.msdn.com/tims/archive/2007/04/15/introducing-microsoft-silverlight.aspx
• http://blogs.msdn.com/somasegar/archive/2007/04/15/silverlight-the-next-generation-web-media-experiences.aspx

That"s quite pretty.

Here"s more on SilverLight, the technology formerly known as WPF/E.

"If you"d just shown that logo to me, I wouldn"t have thought it was Microsoft."

That"s pretty high praise, given who it came from...

Quem já leu o meu artigo na revista Mundo.NET ou quem já está mexendo com o Silverlight, conhecido anteriormente como "WPF/E", deve ter se perguntado em algum momento porque o nome do arquivo js era aghost.js. Bem, o Barak Cohen , explicou o porque deste nome. Na verdade o time de desenvolvimento já tinha dado os indícios do nome oficial do produto. Ag é o símbolo químico da prata (silver em inglês) na tabela periódica. Assim, aghost é o host de uma aplicação Silverlight. Quem diria, hein? Até mais!!...(read more)

We have a number of things coming around WPF/e in the next few weeks, but here is the first.  WPF/e is now called Microsoft Silverlight.

Key points to take away:

• Supports IE, Firefox, Safari (cross browser and cross platform)
• Enables WMV/WMA playback cross platform
• Integrates with Windows Media technologies
• Enables mobile through to HD media scenarios
• Is DRM capable built on Microsoft PlayReady

The other juicy bit of the announcement was this bit:

Based on the Microsoft .NET Framework, Silverlight enables developers and designers to easily use existing skills and tools to deliver media experiences and RIAs for the Web with role-specific tools: for designers, Microsoft Expression^® Studio, and for developers, Visual Studio^®. New tool and server investments for media professionals include the following:

• Expression Media Encoder. Microsoft Expression Media Encoder, which will be a feature of Microsoft Expression Media, enables rapid import, compression and Web publishing of digital video imported from a variety of popular formats, including AVI and QuickTime, into WMV. Capable of running on the desktop or Windows Server^®, Expression Media Encoder is a template-driven system that integrates seamlessly into existing Web publishing workflows for both live and on-demand content delivery. Expression Media Encoder will be a free download for customers of Expression Media when it is shipped later this year.

• Hardware-accelerated video publishing. When paired with a Tarari Encoder Accelerator, Expression Media Encoder reduces encode times by up to 15 times over software alone, a significant capabilities and cost advantage for publishing Web video today.

• Even greater scalability with Windows Server, code-named “Longhorn.” Building on the industry-leading streaming and Web server platform, Windows Server “Longhorn” will enable customers to experience up to twice the scalability on the same hardware when compared with Windows Server 2003. Also being announced today is the Internet Information Services 7 (IIS7) Media Pack, which adds new cost-saving features such as bit-rate throttling and other advanced features designed to help further reduce the cost of media distribution. The IIS7 Media Pack will be a free download for customers of Windows Server “Longhorn” when it ships.

In other words Microsoft is investing in server and tool investments.  These represent the beginnings of that.   More coming in the next few weeks... stay tuned

There is loads more information on this presspass website.  You"ll also want to take a look at Tim Sneaths blog article on the announcement :-)

It seems that Microsoft"s Sliverlight (formerly WPF/e) is the topic of the day.  Since I first learned about WPF/e last year, I started thinking of ways in which Mindjet MindManager could work with it.  I started playing around with it and the most exciting feature of it was that it was all based in XML.  That means that I could use my existing software tools like Visual Studio and my favorite languages, XSLT and C#, to transform MindManager"s XML to Silverlight"s XAML.  To get my mind around the feature set of Silverlight, I built a simple website (it isn"t live yet) that lets you upload and view Mindjet MindManager maps on Internet Explorer, FireFox and Mac Safari.  Watch the video that I produced in TechSmith"s Camtasia Studio.

It"s just rough so far with simple expanding and collapsing of topics, but as time permits, I will work on developing its feature set.

I got several questions about when and if Silverlight (code name WPF/E) will be supported on Windows Mobile devices. The code name has included the word everywhere. Do you still remeber this:

"Empower people through great software at any time, at any place, on any device." (Bill Gates, 2000)

Seven years ago we still have the same question, if it will really run on any device. Microsoft is doing his best to support more and more Web browsers and devices. Today Silverlight supports following "devices":

• Windows XP Service Pack 2 and Windows Vista:
  - Microsoft Internet Explorer 6
  - Windows Internet Explorer 7
  - Mozilla Firefox 1.5.0.8 and 2.0.x
• Apple Mac OS X:
  - Firefox 1.5.0.8 and 2.0.x
  - Apple Safari 2.0.4

Support for Linux will be added if there is any need, but currently not on the roadmap as far as I know. Windows Mobile devices will be supported, but I think it will not be ready until MIX07 which already starts in a week. I would be happy to see Silverlight running on my Windows Mobile devices.

Reporting the release to the public of MS Silverlight (codename WPF/E) I was wondering if that product has been named after David Silverlight, creator of many community websites like Community Credit.

I heard that Microsoft has just started an extremely high reward system for very active community leaders, and that WPF/E is the first reward issued with that system.

David is reporting a conversation he had with Bill Gates: To be honest, I didn't really believe him when told me about actually meeting Bill Gates a few months back to discuss some really high honor, but anyway it's a awesome honor for a community developer to have a real product named after him.

Congratulations David!!! 

PS. Now I know why you couldn't tell me about those 4 days you spent in Seattle after the MVP Summit last month.

I found a nice table which will show a comparison between Microsoft products and Flash/Flex:

¹ maybe will be changed later; currently you could GZIP the content to reduce size of XAML code
² using wpfeControl.createFromXaml(xamlstring); 
³ Windows Vista and Windows XP Service Pack 2, Microsoft Internet Explorer 6, Windows Internet Explorer 7, Firefox 1.5.0.8 and 2.0.x; Apple Mac OS X, Firefox 1.5.0.8 and 2.0.x, Apple Safari 2.0.4
⁴ .NET 2.0: Windows 2000 Service Pack 3, Windows XP Service Pack 2, Windows Vista; .NET 3.0: Windows Vista and Windows XP Service Pack 2; Internet Explorer 6, Windows Internet Explorer 7. 
⁵ Flash Player 8: Windows Vista and Windows XP; Internet Explorer 6 and Windows Internet Explorer 7; Windows 2000 with Internet Explorer 5.x; Firefox 1.x, Mozilla 1.x, Netscape 7.x or later, AOL 9, Opera 7.11 or later; Mac OS X, Internet Explorer 5.2, Mozilla 1.x, Firefox 1.x, Safari 1.x or later.

Will Ballard is writing in a comment about client performance. Well, this is very hard to compare because it will vary on some points. If you have a look at .NET (Click-Once or XAML Browser Application) you will have the same hardware support as installing the software directly on the client: 2D/3D graphics card, hard disk to store data and documents (compared with Cookies or Ajax server-side store),...

The performance of Silverlight and Flash will be nearly the same, I cannot see any difference. While Silverlight is using XAML as description language in a non-compressed format Flash will be faster for initial start. For Silverlight you could compress the XAML files with IIS compression enabled. There is a great Web site which simulates a Windows Vista: http://www.windowsvista.si/main.htm. I think there you can get a feeling how the performance could be. 

If something is wrong or missing on this table, please leave a message and I will add it. Maybe there are other platforms missing, please give me a short hint...