About Microsoft Silverlight

Silverlight is a Rich Internet Application framework developed by
Microsoft. Like other RIA frameworks such as Adobe Flash, it enables
developers to create applications that have a consistent appearance
and functionality across different web browsers and operating systems.
Silverlight provides users with a rich experience, with built-in
support for vector graphics, animation, and audio and video playback.

Although Silverlight is still a relatively new technology, it has
already been used for live streaming of high-profile events such as
the 2008 Beijing Olympics and the 2009 Presidential Inauguration. It
is also being used by major sports organizations to broadcast live
content.

To run Silverlight applications, users must install a browser plug-in,
which provides a runtime environment that implements a subset of the
.NET Framework. Currently, Silverlight is available on Internet
Explorer, Firefox, and Google Chrome for Microsoft Windows and on
Safari and Firefox for Mac OS X.

To start building Silverlight applications, developers need to install
Silverlight Tools for Visual Studio 2008 SP1. This add-on is available
for download from the official Microsoft Silverlight website:
http://silverlight.net. It is compatible with both Visual Studio 2008
and Visual Web Developer 2008 Express.

The development experience is similar to ASP.NET – applications are
implemented using markup and code-behind. One significant difference
is the markup language. Instead of HTML, Silverlight uses a UI
definition language known as XAML (eXtensible Application Markup
Language). Although there are graphical tools such as Expression Blend
that make it easier for designers to produce XAML code, many
developers prefer to write XAML by hand. Regardless of the design tool
used, learning XAML is essential for developing Silverlight
applications.