1.
History of Silverlight
Versions and its
Features
Silverlight is a browser plug-in that promotes a collaborative
development environment of rich online media contents that enable
developers and designers alike to integrate multimedia and graphics
into web pages within the context of the managed environment.
Top Silverlight features
• IIS Smooth Streaming :
It enables you to deliver high definition streams that play very
smoothly on any device running Silverlight.
• Pivot viewer :
It helps in easier interaction with massive database on the web in
ways that are powerful, fun and informative.
• Sketch flow :
It revolutionizes the speed and accuracy with which you can
demonstrate a vision for an application.
• Deep zoom :
It is the fastest and smoothest zooming technology on the Web.

2.
• Pixel shader :
This software based effects include blur and drop shadow that can
be applied to any graphical content for animation.
• New controls :
Silverlight is packed with over 60 high-quality and customizable
esternal controls such as charting and media.
• Media format extensibility :
With the new Raw AV pipeline, it can easily support a wide variety
of third-party codes.
• Perspective 3D graphics :
With this the users can rotate or scale live content in space without
writing any additional code.
• Skinning and styling :
It helps to create graphics and then use them to customize controls,
such as the look of a scrollbar.
Silverlight versions :
Silverlight 1.0 :
This release was originally called WPF/E, an acronym for Windows
Presentation Foundation/ Everywhere.

3.
Key features:
• Has core presentation framework, which is responsible for UI,
interactivity and user input
• Basic UI controls, media playback , graphics and animation and DOM
integration
• The main drawback of this release is no support for managed code.
• Applications are written either in XAML or in a mix of XAML and
JavaScript with DOM (Document Object Model) to manipulate the user
interface.

4.
Silverlight 2.0 :
It was released in March 2008.
Key features :
• Rich base class library: This is a compatible subset of the full .NET
Framework. It supports Reflection, Collections,Regular Expressions,
String Handling, Data Access, LINQ etc…
• Powerful built-in controls:
• Extensible control base classes
• Common controls: Textbox, Checkbox, Slider, RadioButton,
TabControl, ScrollViewer, ProgressBar, Calendar etc…

5.
• Layout controls: Grid, StackPanel etc…
• Data controls: DataGrid, etc…
• Advanced skinning and template support: help to easily customize
the look and feel of an application.
• Programming Languages: Visual Basic, JavaScript, C#, IronPython and
IronRuby.
• Cross-platform and cross-browser support: This supports for Mac,
Windows, and Linux in Safari,Firefox, and Windows Internet Explorer.
• Security: Silverlight CoreCLR uses an attribute-based security model,
as opposite to the Code Access Security model of the desktop version
of .NET Framework.
Silverlight 3 :
This was released in July 9, 2009, mainly providing improvements in
graphics capabilities, media management, application development
areas , and integration in the designer’s Expression Blend 3 tools.
Key features :
• Support for 3D graphics
• Animation
• Pixel shaders
• Support theme application

6.
• Enhance control-skinning
• Improve text rendering
• Bitmap APIs
• Support for new media formats
• IIS Media Services
• Silverlight DRM for media streaming
• Empowers developers to develop data and media-rich interactive
RIAs
• Silverlight 3 SDK
• New networking APIs
• New FormsXAML controls
• New DataManipulationXAML controls
• New ContentXAML controls
• Improvements of other user interface framework
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Silverlight 4.0 :
This was released on November 18, 2009.
Key features :
• Supports GPU accelerated video decoding
• Variable speed playback of media content with automatic audio pitch

7.
correction
• Built-in RC support
• Supports faster application start-up
• Automated UI testing that supports for applications with Visual Studio
2010
• Developers can now debug data-binding expressions
• WCF RIA Services improvements that include complex type support
and better MVVM support.
Learn Silverlight through our silverlight tutorials, which would be of
much help for you.
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