A Web-based digital video technology by Microsoft, codename “WPF/E”. Silverlight is a cross-
browser, cross-
platform plug-in for delivering media and
rich interactive applications for the Web. The Silverlight browser plug-in is freely available for all major browsers including
Mozilla Firefox, Apple’a Safari and Windows
Internet Explorer running on the
Macintosh or
Microsoft Windows. It’s a competitor product to both the Adobe Macromedia
Flash player and Apple
QuickTime player.
Silverlight is based on the Microsoft .NET Framework and can be integrated with existing Web infrastructure and applications, including Apache and PHP, JavaScript and XHTML on the client. Using Silverlight, designers are able to prepare media for encoding and distribution, and create W3C standards-compliant sites.