In the Part II, we looked into the presentation and programming model for the web and the need that gave rise to a new technology Silverlight. So Silverlight is a technology that is used to develop RIA (web applications that are similar to desktop application) delivered through the way of browser plug-in. With Silverlight (and AJAX), the goal is to create web applications that are more like desktop applications, and ultimately, to create applications that are indistinguishable from the desktop applications.
"Silverlight is Cross-Browser, Cross-Platform programmable plug-in for delivering richer user experiences on the net." definition of Silverlight :-) Silverlight was previously known by its code name, Windows Presentation Foundation Everywhere (WPF/E). It runs on all popular browser like IE, Firefox, Safari, Opera, Chrome (Silverlight 4.0) and on various OS such as Windows, Mac OS etc.
Fig: Silverlight Application event and method handling
Applications that run in the browser typically are made up of HTML.This markup contains the calls to instantiate the Silverlight plug-in. As users interact with the Silverlight application they raise events that can be captured by either JavaScript or .Net framework functions. In turn, program code can make method calls against the elements in the Silverlight content to manipulate it, add new content, or remove existing content. Finally, XAML can be read by the plug-in and rendered. The XAML itself can exist inline in the page, externally as a static file or as dynamic XAML returned from the server.
The main programming interface is the JavaScript DOM API.XAML parsing engine. The parser creates the in-memory XAML DOM for use by the presentation core, which handles the rendering of the graphics and animations defined by the XAML.In addition, the runtime contains the codecs necessary for playback of WMV, WMA, and MP3 multimedia content.Finally, the runtime contains the presentation core, which manages the rendering process. This presentation runtime is built into a browser plug-in that supports several flavors of Windows as well as Mac OS X, using any of several browsers.
After the 3 parts of "What is Silverlight?", hope so that you got an idea about What Silverlight is ?
4 comments:
Hi,
I am new to silverlight, from your brief explanation what I need to confirm is that the silverlight simply another technique to developing web application (from Microsoft), already we have asp.net right?
Silverlight is not just another technology to develop web application. It's used to develop next generation, user friendly Rich Internet Application.
Thanks nishi,
Is that Silverlight having performance problem when large database oriented service processes
Hi,
I have worked with large database oriented applications, but there was not much performance problem. The only thing is every time you want to connect to DB you have to make a WCF service call.
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