Silverlight is a new technology which is base on .Net Framework and cross-browser , cross-platform.It can provide a rich interactive application(RIA) for the web.Of course it can run outside of the browser on your desktop also.It is easy for you to use Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML) to design UI.You can load controls,make animations,draw graphics,fabricate three-dimensional objects with XAML which sounds wonderful.
Commonly it like flash player pugin ,Little download and easy installation but more strong than flash.It streams video and audio with hign quality even in 720p HDTV video modes.Also you can drag and drop ,zoom,turn graphics in the browser.Refresh data partialy but not whole the page which is like ajax.
You can create silverlight applications in a variety of ways.You can use silverlight markup to create media and graphics and manipulate them with dynamic languages (eg.C#,VB,IronPython,C++) and manage code.silverlight also enable you to use professional-quality tools like VS2008-VS2010 for coding and Microsoft Expression Blend for layout and design graphics.
There are more features in silverlight:
- WPF and XAML.
- Extensions to JavaScript
- Cross-browser,Cross-platform support
- Integration with existing apllications
- Tools support.
- Networking support(eg. HTTP,TCP,WCF,SOAP,AJAX,JSON,RSS)
- LINQ
The latest version is silverlight 4,and we'll start learning begin with its controls.It contains some controls as the follow:
AutoCompleteBox
Border
Button
Calendar
Canvas
CheckBox
ChildWindow
ComboBox
ContentPresenter
Control
DataGrid
DataPager
DatePicker
DescriptionViewer
Frame
Grid
GridSplitter
HyperlinkButton
Image
ItemsControl
ItemsPresenter
Label
ListBox
MediaElement
MultiScaleImage
MultiScaleSubImage
OpenFileDialog
Page
Panel
PasswordBox
ProgressBar
RadioButton
RichTextBox
SaveFileDialog
ScrollContentPresenter
ScrollViewer
SelectorSelectionAdapter
Slider
StackPanel
TabControl
TextBlock
TextBox
ToolTip
ToolTipService
TreeView
UserControl
Validation
ValidationError
ValidationSummary
Viewbox
VirtualizingPanel
VirtualizingStackPanel
WebBrowser
WebBrowserBrush
