Silverlight 2 Beta Evaluation Guide


Reach Out to New Markets Multi-channel deployment of Web applications to the Desktop and Devices through .NET



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Reach Out to New Markets

Multi-channel deployment of Web applications to the Desktop and Devices through .NET


Silverlight is based on Microsoft .NET, enabling a common development code base for multi-channel delivery across the Web, devices and the desktop. Silverlight (on the Web and mobile) and WPF (on the desktop) use a single, more-productive programming model that allows developers to ‘Learn once, apply everywhere’.

This consistent runtime across all supported platforms and browsers enables developers or designers to easily build one set of UI and application logic and run on all the supported platforms. There will not be any requirement to invest in any additional tooling to produce Silverlight device applications beyond what you might already use to develop Silverlight Web applications.

The opportunity here is to have a single code base that scales from a Device to the Web to a Desktop application. For example, a Desktop application can build a far deeper relationship with the customer by installing on the user’s machine, allowing the user to work offline and have access to local files. This relationship can then extend to a device where, for example, summary information or alerts are shown.

Monetization of media assets via protected content and advertising-enabled scenarios


With support for Web playlists in IIS7 Media Pack, content owners can monetize their media assets through advertising-supported revenue models. A variety of advertising types, including bumpers, trailers, and interstitial ads, can be dynamic and personalized via integration with ASP.NET servers. Using Web Playlists, content and advertising can be sequenced with obfuscated URLs sent from the server via a client-side playlist. Since media playback experiences cannot be compromised, this ensures that ads are played and content is protected.

A variety of content protection schemes, including Digital Rights Management (DRM); end-user authentication and authorization; and SSL ensure that content owners can fully monetize and protect their media assets.

Whether using Windows Media Services to stream live or on-demand content, or using IIS7 with the new IIS7 Media Pack module, using Windows Server for delivery offers content owners the most cost-effective solution for media delivery when compared to other server offerings. Additionally, Windows Media Services also provides the W3C-compliant logging necessary to ensure that broadcasters can accurately and effectively track and report on advertisements.

Web-based services such as Silverlight Streaming for Windows Live will extend the ecosystem, offering free media serving and application hosting for up to 4 GB with immediate high-performance, global-scale application delivery.


Cost-effective media delivery via Windows Server


Windows Media Services (WMS) 2008 in Windows Server 2008 provides advanced streaming-media support, enabling massively scalable live and on-demand broadcasts with industry-leading availability, cost-efficiency, and uptime. Microsoft Silverlight joins the list of client platforms that can connect to and present WMS streamed audio and video as an integrated part of media-enabled Web applications.

IIS7 Media Pack brings bit-rate throttling to progressive downloads, significantly reducing bandwidth requirements and lowering Web server delivery costs.


A thriving ecosystem of .NET and Windows Media partners, developers, applications and services


Silverlight has gained strong industry support from content creators, distributors, software vendors, and solution providers. Over 85 companies now support Silverlight via the Silverlight Partner Initiative, and major enterprises and media companies are announcing plans to integrate Silverlight into their online experiences, promising to truly light up the Web for viewers and end users.

Since Silverlight is tightly integrated with .NET, millions of developers using Microsoft developer technologies today for desktop and Web-based RIAs can transfer their skills quickly to Silverlight development. Today, millions of developers use .NET technologies, making it easy to find a developer with the right skills.

Because Silverlight uses Visual Studio for development, it also enables a wide range of other helper technologies to be employed. Visual Studio itself comes complete with a full-featured code and XAML editor, a debugger, a profiler and a data designer. In addition, the Visual Studio Industry Partner program (270+ VSIP partners, 25 VSTS partners) provides 800+ VSIP packages and 10,000 Visual Studio Add-Ins.

Since Silverlight uses XAML, which is an open text-based format, it is also well supported by third-party tools and component vendors.



Increase Team Productivity and Collaboration

Rapid development through XML-based declarative markup and a full set of controls


Silverlight provides a full set of business controls. These make applications much easier to build and more responsive to use than AJAX controls. With Silverlight 2, there are many new controls now available, adding richness to the development environment. Here are examples of the new Calendar and Datagrid controls :



Figure 3: Example Calendar and Datagrid controls

The following controls are now available in Silverlight 2:




  • Button/ButtonBase

  • FileOpenDialog

  • Image

  • ItemsControl

  • MediaElement

  • MultiScaleImage

  • StackPanel

  • TextBox

  • TextBlock

  • Calendar/DatePicker

  • CheckBox

  • ContentControl

  • Datagrid

  • Hyperlink

  • ListBox

  • RadioButton

  • Slider/RangeBase

  • ToggleButton

  • Tooltip

Silverlight also provides a set of layout containers such as stack and grid, which allow the designer or developer to specify how a control should be positioned in relation to other controls and how they should re-size when the browser is expanded or collapsed. The benefit is that if more controls are added, then they can be placed correctly. At Mix ’08 the following controls were made available:




  • Canvas

  • Grid

  • Popup

  • StackPanel



Silverlight allows controls to be directly connected to data sources, and the control itself can have an item template, which knows how to show each item of data. An example would be a list control, which would have a template to create a calendar and text field for each item. If the user then selects or edits these items, the changes are made directly against the underlying data.



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