~ Silverlight 1.0
The first version of Silverlight is Silverlight 1.0, which was developed under the codename ‘Windows Presentation Foundation / Everywhere’ (WPF/E) and released in September 2007. It consist of the core presentation framework which is responsible for the UI, interactivity and user input, basic UI controls, graphics and animation, media playback, Digital Rights Management and DOM integration. It consists of the following components:
– Input – handling input from devices like keyboard, mouse etc.
– UI core – managing rendering of bitmap images (including compressed raster images like JPEG), 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.
The first version of Silverlight did not include .Net framework. Therefore, to modify the UI programmatically, we need to make use of scripting language supported by Silverlight, which was JavaScript. Silverlight provides various shapes like line, eclipse and rectangle. It also provides support for text, images, media and animations. In addition, you can make your custom shapes using the basic shapes provided by Silverlight.
~ Silverlight 2.0
Silverlight 2.0 (previously known as Silverlight 1.1) was released in October 2008. Silverlight 2.0 includes a version of .Net framework implementing the same Common Language Runtime version as .Net framework 3.0, so it can execute programs written in any .NET language. Therefore, from Silverlight 2.0, Silverlight supports managed language like C#, VB.NET. The XAML (pronounced as ‘ZAMEL’), which is responsible for defining the UI for the Silverlight application, can now be augmented by a code behind file. The following figure shows the Silverlight Architecture,
Core Presentation Framework : Components and services oriented toward the UI and user interaction, including user input, lightweight UI controls for use in Web applications, media playback, digital rights management, data binding, and presentation features, including vector graphics, text, animation, and images. Also includes the Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML) for specifying layout.
.Net Framework for Silverlight : A subset of the .NET Framework that contains components and libraries, including data integration, extensible Windows controls, networking, base class libraries, garbage collection, and the common language runtime (CLR).
~ Silverlight 3.0
Silverlight 3.0 was released in July 2009. Silverlight 3 includes an increased number of controls – including but not limited to DataGrid, TreeView, various layout panels, DataForm for forms-driven applications and DataPager for viewing paginated data. Some of these controls are from the Silverlight Toolkit. In addition, Silverlight 3 includes a navigation framework to let Silverlight applications use the hyperlinked navigation model as well as enabling deep-linking (linking directly to specific pages) within Silverlight applications.
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 pixel shaders. A Bitmap API is provided to let Silverlight 3 applications manipulate bitmaps
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 isolated storage, 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
Silverlight 3 supports Out-of-Browser experiences, i.e., Silverlight applications can be installed to the system for offline access (provided the application manifest is designed to allow local installation) where they run outside the browser. They are launched using the Start Menu 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 Function Keys is enabled. Locally installed Silverlight applications still run in a sandbox.
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 4.0
Silverlight 4.0 beta was released in November 2009. The updates in Silverlight 4.0 include,
Tooling - New IDE Visual Studio 2010 and Expression Blend 3.0
Printing API - The most awaited feature in Silverlight. With Silverlight 4.0, you can now provide printing from your Silverlight application.
Localization - Silverlight 4.0 now supports 30+ languages.
Webcam and Microphone support - Silverlight now provides support for Webcam and microphone.
Local File Access - Now you can access the user's local file system (with the user's permission offcourse).
Right to Left Support - Silverlight 4.0 supports right to left display of text.
Other features include Com-Interop, Toast API, MEF etc.
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