Silverlight

Silverlight is a Microsoft technology available since 2007 - it refers to both the extension ( plug-in) for web browsers to run Rich Internet Applications and the platform necessary for their creation. In addition to Internet Explorer, the plug-in is available for Opera, Safari and Firefox browsers. As part of a technical cooperation with Microsoft, Novell developed Moonlight, a Linux- and Unix/X11-based version of Silverlight - available as open source. Moonlight 2 was introduced in December 2009. Currently the versions Silverlight 3.0 and Silverlight 4.0 beta are available at the link below. In addition, Silverlight 3.0 is offered for MACOS X. Alternative technologies to Silverlight are JavaFX from SUN, Adobe Flash, OpenLaszlo and Adobe Flex.

The basic idea of Silverlight

The basic idea of Silverlight is to create a seamless transition between the design of web applications and their logical programming. For this purpose, Microsoft Expression Blend provides an editor that can implement the design requirements. The actual logic within a Silverlight project is implemented using the . NET languages based on Visual Studio. The result is so-called Rich Internet Applications - a specific form of interactive web applications.

From a technical point of view, Silverlight is based on the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and the Extensible Application Markup Language( XAML). WPF is a graphics framework from Microsoft and is integrated into the .NET Framework 3.0. In addition, extensive functions for the output of 2D/ 3D graphics, audio, video and images with integrated hardware acceleration are provided by the framework. The essential thing about WPF in the context of Silverlight is that WPF clearly distinguishes the presentation and logic of a process. The basis for this is the markup language XAML, which describes the hierarchies ofuser interfaces declaratively as XML code. In terms of Silverlight, XAML is used to define elements such as images, rectangles, buttons, videos, animations, etc. Thus, the elements described with XAML are ultimately presented in a Silverlight project with the help of WPF. In connection with WPF, however, it must also be pointed out that it requires a lot ofsystem resources.

The advantage of XAML is its structure as an XML file. Thus, any programming languages such as JavaScript, F# or C# can read its content or its content can be easily found by search engines. To create the XML file, Microsoft provides various editors under the name Expression. The background is that long number sequences are necessary, for example, to describe complex 3D scenes. For a better overview and for the creation of the XAML files, an editor with a visual interface is available with Expression Blend, which creates the contents of a project and generates the actual XAML code in the background. Thus, graphics can be created and animated with Microsoft Expression - the logical programming is done in any case with the support of .NET languages in the development environment of Visual Studio.

The advantages of Silverlight

The advantage of Silverlight lies in the combination of Expression Blend and Visual Studio - a Silverlight project combines the aspects of design and programming. The developer can access the contents of the XAML file created by the designer from within Visual Studio. For this purpose, each graphical object created in Expression Blend is given a unique so-called identification( ID), which allows access at any time during the implementation ofprogram code. With Silverlight, .Net developers now have the opportunity to use the same language for front- and back-end as well as already existing knowledge.

A plug-in provided at the link below integrates Silverlight development into an EclipseIDE and the Eclipse Rich Client Platform( RCP).