Give me the ... silverlight

Silverlight is a new Microsoft technology which is all set to rival Adobe Flash for creating rich interactive web sites. It's built on top of and is a sub-set of, existing technologies namely, .Net and WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation a new presentation sub-system which is part of .Net 3). The first version is mostly geared towards streaming media (such as video or sound although I've spotted some interesting animations, check out our own on our home page), while the next version (1.1) will allow for scripting using C# which will, I think, really open things up and allow Silverlight to rival Flash in what it is capable of.

Of course, there are two things that need to be in place to ensure that Silverlight is taken up, the first being that it must be supported on more than just Internet Explorer on the Windows platform. With this in mind Microsoft released it with plug ins already available for FireFox and the Safari browser on the Mac, there is also a version dubbed Moonlight in the pipeline for Linux. But it also needs designers and developers who are prepared to use it, and here Microsoft scores since they have an army of .Net developers for whom Silverlight will be readily accessible and useable (not something which is necessarily true of Flash).

I think it's a really cool technology and I'm looking forward to seeing how many different uses it will be put to!