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.

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.
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.

2. 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.
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.
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

3. Common controls: Textbox, Checkbox, Slider, RadioButton, TabControl,
ScrollViewer, ProgressBar, Calendar etc…
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
• 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)

4. 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
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.
To know more about ASP .NET tutorials stay connected to CRB Tech
Reviews.
CRB Tech reviews over here has been completed.