What Is MSN Silver?
- Silverlight is Microsoft's interactive multimedia development platform. Similar to Adobe's Flash, it allows the creation and display of graphics, sound and animation. Silverlight is a free plug-in available from Microsoft, and compatible with a number of browsers, devices and operating systems.
- Silverlight 4 features a wide range of features above the previous Silverlight 3. These include support for printing, webcam functions and microphone interaction. For developers, new features include a fully editable design surface, built-in project support, a full set of form controls, and drag and drop support for databinding and creating bound controls, among many others. Other new features include the ability to scroll through long lists with a mouse wheel, support for Google's Chrome browser and multi-touch support.
- Developed by Novell's Mono Project, Moonlight is a version of Silverlight designed for Linux and Unix based operating systems. Moonlight offers many of the same features as Silverlight, although content with Microsoft's PlayReady Digital Rights Management protection is not supported at time of publication.
- Browsers currently supporting Silverlight include Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser 7 or later, Google's Chrome Browser, Mozilla's Firefox 3 or later, Apple's Safari, Skyfire and SeaMonkey. Silverlight is also supported on Windows XP and 7, Mac OS X Snow Leopard and Lion, Windows Phone 7 and the Symbian mobile OS.