Why do i need silverlight microsoft

With the public release of Silverlight imminent, now is the right time to become familiar with the software and how it might affect your Web application strategy. With so much Silverlight information available right now, it is difficult to distill what is important and what is hype. I'll do my best to lift the fog with these 10 things that you should know about Microsoft's Silverlight. For most development teams, developing a Web site that will work identically with popular browsers, including Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari and Opera, is a difficult proposition.

The problem is not simply the necessity for multiple code implementations but also exponentially large testing sets. As a developer creates matrices of browser versions and operating systems, the number of testbeds needed becomes enormous.

Usually, there are two ways that a development project addresses this: support only a small subset of Web browsers or increase the number of quality assurance personnel. In contrast, the Silverlight plug-in enables an identical development model regardless of user operating system and browser. Silk Test Classic supports Silverlight applications that run in a browser as well as out-of-browser and can record and play back controls in Silverlight. For information about new features, supported platforms, and tested versions, refer to the Release Notes.

Silverlight applications support dynamic object recognition. You can create tests for dynamic object recognition in your test environment. When you record a test case with the Open Agent, Silk Test Classic creates locator keywords in an INC file to create scripts that use dynamic object recognition and window declarations.

Silk Test Classic includes record and replay support for Silverlight controls. For a complete list of the controls available for Silverlight testing, see the Silverlight Class Reference. Programming one set of source code files which an interpreter then converts to run on different operating system saves developers from maintaining multiple code bases.

Microsoft Silverlight acts as an interpreter to execute Web apps on different operating systems, so you need the Silverlight plugin if you're planning on running Silverlight apps you find on the Web; otherwise, you don't need this plugin. Silverlight is Microsoft's proprietary plugin to deliver a variety of multimedia products through Web pages or Microsoft's Windows mobile operating system.

Developers can use Silverlight to create slideshows, stream video and even create fully interactive games and other applications.

Silverlight is part of Microsoft's. Silverlight is free software, and you can download the plugin to run Silverlight applications through your Web browser on either Mac or Windows. The SDKs from Microsoft that allow developers to create Silverlight applications are also free to download. However, SDKs are useless without a development environment to actually make software.

Visual Studio Express, a functional version with very limited features, is free from Microsoft, but you need to pay for the fully featured version.