application framework
In computer programming, an application framework consists of a software framework used by software developers to implement the standard structure of application software.
Application frameworks became popular with the rise of graphical user int ...
Adobe
Adobe ( ; ) is a building material made from earth and organic materials. is Spanish for ''mudbrick''. In some English-speaking regions of Spanish heritage, such as the Southwestern United States, the term is used to refer to any kind of e ...
Adobe Flash
Adobe Flash (formerly Macromedia Flash and FutureSplash) is a multimedia Computing platform, software platform used for production of Flash animation, animations, rich web applications, application software, desktop applications, mobile apps, mo ...
. A plugin for Silverlight is still available for a very small number of browsers. While early versions of Silverlight focused on
streaming media
Streaming media is multimedia that is delivered and consumed in a continuous manner from a source, with little or no intermediate storage in network elements. ''Streaming'' refers to the delivery method of content, rather than the content it ...
, later versions supported
multimedia
Multimedia is a form of communication that uses a combination of different content forms such as text, audio, images, animations, or video into a single interactive presentation, in contrast to tradition ...
,
graphics
Graphics () are visual images or designs on some surface, such as a wall, canvas, screen, paper, or stone, to inform, illustrate, or entertain. In contemporary usage, it includes a pictorial representation of data, as in design and manufacture ...
, and animation, and gave support to developers for
CLI languages
CLI languages are computer programming languages that are used to produce libraries and programs that conform to the Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) specifications. With some notable exceptions, most CLI languages compile entirely to the Com ...
and development tools. Silverlight was one of the two application development platforms for
Windows Phone
Windows Phone (WP) is a discontinued family of mobile operating systems developed by Microsoft for smartphones as the replacement successor to Windows Mobile and Zune. Windows Phone featured a new user interface derived from the Metro design la ...
, but web pages using Silverlight did not run on the Windows Phone or
Windows Mobile
Windows Mobile is a discontinued family of mobile operating systems developed by Microsoft for smartphones and personal digital assistants.
Its origin dated back to Windows CE in 1996, though Windows Mobile itself first appeared in 2000 as Pock ...
versions of
Internet Explorer
Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Internet Explorer, commonly abbreviated IE or MSIE) is a series of graphical user interface, graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft which was used in the Microsoft Wind ...
, as there was no Silverlight plugin for Internet Explorer on those platforms.
Microsoft terminated support for Silverlight on
Internet Explorer 11
Internet Explorer 11 (IE11) is the eleventh, final, and now deprecated version of the Internet Explorer web browser. It was initially included in the release of Windows 8.1, Windows RT 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2 on October 17, 2013, and was ...
(the last remaining web browser still supporting Silverlight) on October 12, 2021. It is supported on Windows 8.1 and later and Windows Server 2012 and later, and e.g. Windows Embedded POSReady 7 and Windows Thin PC, while e.g. Windows 7 and earlier do not get security updates.
History
Introduction
From the initial launch in 2007, reviewers compared the product to (since then discontinued) Adobe's Flash.
Adoption
According to statowl.com, Microsoft Silverlight had a penetration of 64.2% in May 2011. Usage on July 2010 was 53.6%, whereas market leader Adobe Flash was installed on 95.3% of browsers, and Java was supported on 76.5% of browsers. Support of these plugins is not mutually exclusive; one system can support all three.
Silverlight was used to provide video streaming for the
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast, its headquarters are l ...
coverage of the
2008 Summer Olympics
The 2008 Summer Olympics (), officially the Games of the XXIX Olympiad () and also known as Beijing 2008 (), were an international multisport event held from 8 to 24 August 2008, in Beijing, China. A total of 10,942 athletes from 204 Na ...
in Beijing, the
2010 Winter Olympics
)''
, nations = 82
, athletes = 2,626
, events = 86 in 7 sports (15 disciplines)
, opening = February 12, 2010
, closing = February 28, 2010
, opened_by = Governor General Michaëlle Jean
, cauldron = Catriona Le May DoanNancy GreeneWayne Gretz ...
in Vancouver, and the 2008 conventions for both major United States political parties. Silverlight was also used by
Amazon Video
Amazon Prime Video, also known simply as Prime Video, is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming and rental service of Amazon offered as a standalone service or as part of Amazon's Prime subscription. The service pri ...
and
Netflix
Netflix, Inc. is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service and production company based in Los Gatos, California. Founded in 1997 by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph in Scotts Valley, California, it offers a fil ...
for their instant video streaming services, but Netflix said in its Tech Blog in 2013 that, since Microsoft had announced Silverlight's end-of-life, they would be moving to
HTML5 video
The HTML5 specification introduced the video element for the purpose of playing videos, partially replacing the object element. HTML5 video is intended by its creators to become the new standard way to show video on the web, instead of the previo ...
.
Demise
Industry observers announced the death of Silverlight as early as 2011. Internally, even proponents of the technology thought
Extensible Application Markup Language
Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML ) is a declarative XML-based language that Microsoft developed for initializing structured values and objects. It is available under Microsoft's Open Specification Promise.
XAML is used extensively ...
as a concept was a bad idea from the start.
In 2012, Microsoft deprecated Silverlight for
HTML5
HTML5 is a markup language used for structuring and presenting content on the World Wide Web. It is the fifth and final major HTML version that is a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommendation. The current specification is known as the HTML ...
in
Windows 8
Windows 8 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on August 1, 2012; it was subsequently made available for downl ...
, but as of the beginning of 2015, it was not clear what Microsoft's official position was on Silverlight's future. In July 2015, a Microsoft blog post clarified that, "... we encourage companies that are using Silverlight for media to begin the transition to DASH/MSE/CENC/EME based designs". Microsoft planned to terminate Silverlight support on October 12, 2021. Support for IE7–8 was removed between 2014 and 2016, depending on the OS. Support for IE9 and IE10 has also ended "or though icthe support lifecycle of the underlying browsers, whichever is shorter." There is no Silverlight plugin available for
Microsoft Edge
Microsoft Edge is a proprietary, cross-platform web browser created by Microsoft. It was first released in 2015 as part of Windows 10 and Xbox One and later ported to other platforms as a fork of Google's Chromium open-source project: Android ...
. It has not been supported by
Google Chrome
Google Chrome is a cross-platform web browser developed by Google. It was first released in 2008 for Microsoft Windows, built with free software components from Apple WebKit and Mozilla Firefox. Versions were later released for Linux, macOS ...
since September 2015 or by
Firefox
Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements current and ...
since March 2017.
, about 0.02% of sites used Silverlight, less than 1.5% used the also discontinued Adobe Flash Player, and less than 0.013% use Java client-side (while 3.7% use Java server-side).
Overview
Silverlight provides a
retained mode
Retained mode in computer graphics is a major pattern of API design in graphics libraries, in which
* the graphics library, instead of the client, retains the scene (complete object model of the rendering primitives) to be rendered and
* the ...
graphics system similar to
Windows Presentation Foundation
Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) is a free and open-source graphical subsystem (similar to WinForms) originally developed by Microsoft for rendering user interfaces in Windows-based applications. WPF, previously known as "Avalon", was initia ...
(WPF), and integrates
multimedia
Multimedia is a form of communication that uses a combination of different content forms such as text, audio, images, animations, or video into a single interactive presentation, in contrast to tradition ...
,
graphics
Graphics () are visual images or designs on some surface, such as a wall, canvas, screen, paper, or stone, to inform, illustrate, or entertain. In contemporary usage, it includes a pictorial representation of data, as in design and manufacture ...
, animations, and
interactivity
Across the many fields concerned with interactivity, including information science, computer science, human-computer interaction, communication, and industrial design, there is little agreement over the meaning of the term "interactivity", but m ...
into a single run-time environment. In Silverlight applications, user interfaces are declared in
Extensible Application Markup Language
Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML ) is a declarative XML-based language that Microsoft developed for initializing structured values and objects. It is available under Microsoft's Open Specification Promise.
XAML is used extensively ...
(XAML) and programmed using a subset of the
.NET Framework
The .NET Framework (pronounced as "''dot net"'') is a proprietary software framework developed by Microsoft that runs primarily on Microsoft Windows. It was the predominant implementation of the Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) until bein ...
vector graphics
Vector graphics is a form of computer graphics in which visual images are created directly from geometric shapes defined on a Cartesian plane, such as points, lines, curves and polygons. The associated mechanisms may include vector display a ...
and animations. Silverlight can also be used to create
Windows Sidebar
Windows Desktop Gadgets (called Windows Sidebar in Windows Vista) is a discontinued widget engine for Microsoft Gadgets. Desktop Gadgets have been replaced by Windows 10 Taskbar Widgets. It was introduced with Windows Vista, in which it features ...
gadgets
A gadget is a mechanical device or any ingenious article. Gadgets are sometimes referred to as '' gizmos''.
History
The etymology of the word is disputed. The word first appears as reference to an 18th-century tool in glassmaking that was devel ...
for
Windows Vista
Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, which was released five years before, at the time being the longest time span between successive releases of ...
.
Silverlight supports
H.264
Advanced Video Coding (AVC), also referred to as H.264 or MPEG-4 Part 10, is a video compression standard based on block-oriented, motion-compensated coding. It is by far the most commonly used format for the recording, compression, and distr ...
video,
Advanced Audio Coding
Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) is an audio coding standard for lossy digital audio compression. Designed to be the successor of the MP3 format, AAC generally achieves higher sound quality than MP3 encoders at the same bit rate.
AAC has been stan ...
,
Windows Media Video
Windows Media Video (WMV) is a series of video codecs and their corresponding video coding formats developed by Microsoft. It is part of the Windows Media framework. WMV consists of three distinct codecs: The original video compression technology ...
(WMV),
Windows Media Audio
Windows Media Audio (WMA) is a series of audio codecs and their corresponding audio coding formats developed by Microsoft. It is a proprietary technology that forms part of the Windows Media framework. WMA consists of four distinct codecs. The or ...
(WMA), and
MPEG Layer III
MP3 (formally MPEG-1 Audio Layer III or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) is a coding format for digital audio developed largely by the Fraunhofer Society in Germany, with support from other digital scientists in the United States and elsewhere. Origin ...
(MP3) media content across all supported browsers without requiring
Windows Media Player
Windows Media Player (WMP) is the first media player and media library application that was developed by Microsoft for playing audio, video and viewing images on personal computers running the Microsoft Windows operating system, as well as on ...
, the
Windows Media Player
Windows Media Player (WMP) is the first media player and media library application that was developed by Microsoft for playing audio, video and viewing images on personal computers running the Microsoft Windows operating system, as well as on ...
ActiveX
ActiveX is a deprecated software framework created by Microsoft that adapts its earlier Component Object Model (COM) and Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) technologies for content downloaded from a network, particularly from the World Wide Web. ...
control, or
Windows Media Windows Media is a discontinued multimedia framework for media creation and distribution for Microsoft Windows. It consists of a software development kit (SDK) with several application programming interfaces (API) and a number of prebuilt technolo ...
Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers
The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) (, rarely ), founded in 1916 as the Society of Motion Picture Engineers or SMPE, is a global professional association of engineers, technologists, and executives working in the m ...
(SMPTE)
VC-1
SMPTE 421, informally known as VC-1, is a video coding format. Most of it was initially developed as Microsoft's proprietary video format Windows Media Video 9 in 2003. With some enhancements including the development of a new Advanced Profile, ...
standard, Silverlight also supports VC-1 video. According to the
end user license agreement
An end-user license agreement or EULA () is a legal contract between a software supplier and a customer or end-user, generally made available to the customer via a retailer acting as an intermediary. A EULA specifies in detail the rights and restr ...
VC-1 and H.264 are only licensed for the "personal and non-commercial use of a consumer". Silverlight makes it possible to dynamically load
Extensible Markup Language
Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable. T ...
(XML) content that can be manipulated through a
Document Object Model
The Document Object Model (DOM) is a cross-platform and language-independent interface that treats an XML or HTML document as a tree structure wherein each node is an object representing a part of the document. The DOM represents a document wi ...
(DOM) interface, a technique that is consistent with conventional
Ajax
Ajax may refer to:
Greek mythology and tragedy
* Ajax the Great, a Greek mythological hero, son of King Telamon and Periboea
* Ajax the Lesser, a Greek mythological hero, son of Oileus, the king of Locris
* ''Ajax'' (play), by the ancient Greek ...
techniques. Silverlight exposes a ''Downloader'' object which can be used to download content, like scripts, media assets, or other data, as may be required by the application. With version 2, the programming logic can be written in any .NET
language
Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of met ...
, including some nuclear evolution of common
dynamic programming language
In computer science, a dynamic programming language is a class of high-level programming languages, which at runtime execute many common programming behaviours that static programming languages perform during compilation. These behaviors co ...
s like
IronRuby
IronRuby is an implementation of the Ruby programming language targeting Microsoft .NET Framework. It is implemented on top of the Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR), a library running on top of the Common Language Infrastructure that provides dynam ...
free software
Free software or libre software is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any adapted versions. Free software is a matter of liberty, no ...
implementation (now abandoned) named
Moonlight
Moonlight consists of mostly sunlight (with little earthlight) reflected from the parts of the Moon's surface where the Sun's light strikes.
Illumination
The intensity of moonlight varies greatly depending on the lunar phase, but even the ful ...
, developed by
Novell
Novell, Inc. was an American software and services company headquartered in Provo, Utah, that existed from 1980 until 2014. Its most significant product was the multi-platform network operating system known as Novell NetWare.
Under the lead ...
in cooperation with Microsoft, was released to bring Silverlight version 1 and 2 functionality to
Linux
Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...
,
FreeBSD
FreeBSD is a free and open-source Unix-like operating system descended from the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), which was based on Research Unix. The first version of FreeBSD was released in 1993. In 2005, FreeBSD was the most popular ...
, and other open source platforms, although some Linux distributions did not include it, citing redistribution and
patent
A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an enabling disclosure of the invention."A p ...
concerns. However, in May 2012, Moonlight was abandoned because of its lack of popularity.
Supported platforms
Over the course of about five years,
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...
had released five versions with varying platform support: The first version was released in 2007, and the fifth (and final) major version on May 8, 2012. It is compatible with later versions of Internet Explorer web browser on Microsoft Windows (except
Windows RT
Windows RT is a mobile operating system developed by Microsoft. It is a version of Windows 8 or Windows 8.1 built for the 32-bit ARM architecture (ARMv7). First unveiled in January 2011 at Consumer Electronics Show, the Windows RT 8 operat ...
)
operating system
An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs.
Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also in ...
macOS
macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...
, and with mobile devices using the
Windows Mobile
Windows Mobile is a discontinued family of mobile operating systems developed by Microsoft for smartphones and personal digital assistants.
Its origin dated back to Windows CE in 1996, though Windows Mobile itself first appeared in 2000 as Pock ...
and
Symbian
Symbian is a discontinued mobile operating system
A mobile operating system is an operating system for mobile phones, tablets, smartwatches, smartglasses, or other non-laptop personal mobile computing devices. While computers such as typic ...
(Series 60) platforms.
Cross-platform Mozilla Firefox support for Silverlight was removed in Firefox 52 released in March 2017 when Mozilla removed support for
NPAPI
Netscape Plugin Application Programming Interface (NPAPI) was an application programming interface (API) of the web browsers that allows plugins to be integrated.
Initially developed for Netscape browsers, starting in 1995 with Netscape Navigato ...
plugins, bringing it in-line with the removal of NPAPI plugin support in Google Chrome.
Desktop computers
Silverlight requires an
x86
x86 (also known as 80x86 or the 8086 family) is a family of complex instruction set computer (CISC) instruction set architectures initially developed by Intel based on the Intel 8086 microprocessor and its 8088 variant. The 8086 was introd ...
processor with
Streaming SIMD Extensions
In computing, Streaming SIMD Extensions (SSE) is a single instruction, multiple data (SIMD) instruction set extension to the x86 architecture, designed by Intel and introduced in 1999 in their Pentium III series of Central processing units (CPUs) ...
(SSE) support. Supported processors include the
Intel
Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...
Pentium III
The Pentium III (marketed as Intel Pentium III Processor, informally PIII or P3) brand refers to Intel's 32-bit x86 desktop and mobile CPUs based on the sixth-generation P6 microarchitecture introduced on February 28, 1999. The brand's initial p ...
and up, the
AMD
Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) is an American multinational semiconductor company based in Santa Clara, California, that develops computer processors and related technologies for business and consumer markets. While it initially manufactur ...
Athlon XP
Athlon is the brand name applied to a series of x86-compatible microprocessors designed and manufactured by Advanced Micro Devices (AMD). The original Athlon (now called Athlon Classic) was the first seventh-generation x86 processor and the fi ...
and up, and newer AMD
Duron
Duron is a line of budget x86-compatible microprocessors manufactured by AMD. Released on June 19, 2000 as a lower-cost offering to complement AMD's then mainstream performance Athlon processor line, it also competed with rival chipmaker Inte ...
s.
The following table presents an availability and compatibility matrix of Silverlight versions for various operating systems and web browsers.
Support for
Opera
Opera is a form of theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically a collaboration between a composer and a librett ...
had been promised since May 3, 2007, when David Storey, the Chief Web Opener at Opera, revealed a Microsoft poster for MIX conference that had shown Opera integration as a part of Silverlight 1.1. However, Opera was never officially supported by Silverlight.
On Linux and FreeBSD, the functionality was available via
Moonlight
Moonlight consists of mostly sunlight (with little earthlight) reflected from the parts of the Moon's surface where the Sun's light strikes.
Illumination
The intensity of moonlight varies greatly depending on the lunar phase, but even the ful ...
and
Pipelight
Pipelight is a compatibility layer that allows NPAPI plugins designed for Windows to run on Linux. It is based on a modified version of Wine. It currently supports Silverlight, Flash Player, Unity 3D, and Widevine. There is experimental support fo ...
, though both projects have since been discontinued. Moonlight is available for the major
Linux
Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...
distributions, with support for
Firefox
Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements current and ...
,
Konqueror
Konqueror is a free and open-source web browser and file manager that provides web access and file-viewer functionality for file systems (such as local files, files on a remote FTP server and files in a disk image). It forms a core part of ...
, and Opera browsers, provided it was obtained through Novell.
Miguel de Icaza
Miguel de Icaza (born November 23, 1972) is a Mexican programmer, best known for starting the GNOME, Mono, and Xamarin projects.
Biography Early years
De Icaza was born in Mexico City and studied Mathematics at the National Autonomous University ...
has expressed an interest in working with developers from other operating systems (BSD, Solaris) and other browsers (Konqueror, WebKit and Opera) to ensure that Moonlight works fine on their systems. Availability of Moonlight version 1.0 for FreeBSD was announced in March 2009, but has since been reported not to actually work.
, the current version of Moonlight (4 Preview 1) does not officially work on new versions of Firefox (newer than 3.x) on Linux-based operating systems. However, it can be installed in an unofficial way (for example using th Add-on Compatibility Reporter add-on) and with Firefox 11 it works correctly when installed. As noted above, the Moonlight project was abandoned in May 2012.
A browser plugin named
Pipelight
Pipelight is a compatibility layer that allows NPAPI plugins designed for Windows to run on Linux. It is based on a modified version of Wine. It currently supports Silverlight, Flash Player, Unity 3D, and Widevine. There is experimental support fo ...
used to provide Silverlight access. Pipelight requires browser support for NPAPI plugins, which newer versions of Firefox, Chrome, and Opera have dropped. As of 2018, the Pipelight project has been discontinued.
iOS
iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also include ...
, the most prevalent operating systems on the mobile market.
Silverlight was the primary development environment for
Windows Phone
Windows Phone (WP) is a discontinued family of mobile operating systems developed by Microsoft for smartphones as the replacement successor to Windows Mobile and Zune. Windows Phone featured a new user interface derived from the Metro design la ...
(that is by now discontinued) and is based on Silverlight 4. For previous versions of Windows Mobile, the first
Community Technology Preview
A software release life cycle is the sum of the stages of development and maturity for a piece of computer software ranging from its initial development to its eventual release, and including updated versions of the released version to help impro ...
(CTP) for
Windows Mobile 6
Windows Mobile 6, formerly codenamed "Crossbow",De Herrera, Chris pocketpcfaq.com. Retrieved September 6, 2007. was the version of Windows Mobile released on February 12, 2007 at the Mobile World Congress, 3GSM World Congress 2007. It comes in thr ...
was expected in the second quarter of 2008, but it still has not been officially announced. Microsoft has stopped focusing on bringing Silverlight to Windows Mobile 6.x.
Nokia
Nokia Corporation (natively Nokia Oyj, referred to as Nokia) is a Finnish multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications industry, telecommunications, technology company, information technology, and consumer electronics corporatio ...
announced plans to make Silverlight for Mobile available for S60 on
Symbian OS
Symbian is a discontinued mobile operating system (OS) and computing platform designed for smartphones. It was originally developed as a proprietary software OS for personal digital assistants in 1998 by the Symbian Ltd. consortium. Symbian OS ...
, as well as for
Series 40
Series 40, often shortened as S40, is a software platform and application user interface (UI) software on Nokia's broad range of mid-tier feature phones, as well as on some of the Vertu line of luxury phones. It was one of the world's most wi ...
devices and Nokia internet tablets (while it later sold the business to Microsoft and now sells Android tablets and will sell
Alcatel-Lucent
Alcatel–Lucent S.A. () was a French–American global telecommunications equipment company, headquartered in Boulogne-Billancourt, France. It was formed in 2006 by the merger of France-based Alcatel and U.S.-based Lucent, the latter being a su ...
branded smartphones). Silverlight for Mobile supports Silverlight 2 content and .NET languages. Silverlight for
Windows Phone 7.5
This page provides details for the version history of the Microsoft's Windows Phone branded mobile operating systems, from the release of Windows Phone 7 in October 2010, which was preceded by Windows Mobile version 6.x.
Windows Phone 7
Win ...
is based on Silverlight 4.
Development tools
Silverlight applications could be written in any .NET programming language. As such, any development tools which can be used with .NET languages can work with Silverlight, provided they can target the Silverlight CoreCLR for hosting the application, instead of the .NET Framework CLR. Microsoft has positioned
Microsoft Expression Blend
Microsoft Blend for Visual Studio (formerly Microsoft Expression Blend) is a user interface design tool developed and sold by Microsoft for creating graphical interfaces for web and desktop applications that blend the features of these two types ...
as a companion tool to Visual Studio for the design of Silverlight User Interface applications.
Visual Studio
Visual Studio is an integrated development environment (IDE) from Microsoft. It is used to develop computer programs including web site, websites, web apps, web services and mobile apps. Visual Studio uses Microsoft software development platfor ...
can be used to develop and debug Silverlight applications. To create Silverlight projects and let the compiler target CoreCLR, Visual Studio requires the ''Silverlight Tools for Visual Studio''.
A Silverlight control is a ZIP format file with extension .XAP containing a list of one or more .NET managed assemblies (.DLL files) along with the AppManifest.XAML file containing this list along with the entry point (class and assembly). It can be hosted in any HTML file using an object tag, for example:
A Silverlight project contains the and files which initializes the Silverlight plug-in for use in HTML pages, a XAML file for the UI, and code-behind files for the application code. Silverlight applications are debugged in a manner similar to ASP.NET applications. Visual Studio's ''CLR Remote Cross Platform Debugging'' feature can be used to debug Silverlight applications running on a different platform as well.
In conjunction with the release of Silverlight 2,
Eclipse
An eclipse is an astronomical event that occurs when an astronomical object or spacecraft is temporarily obscured, by passing into the shadow of another body or by having another body pass between it and the viewer. This alignment of three ce ...
was added as a development tool option.
Licensing
An April 2007 ''
PC World
''PC World'' (stylized as PCWorld) is a global computer magazine published monthly by IDG. Since 2013, it has been an online only publication.
It offers advice on various aspects of PCs and related items, the Internet, and other personal tech ...
'' report, suggested that Microsoft intended to release certain parts of Silverlight source code as
open source
Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...
software, but a week later Sam Ramji, director of platform technology strategy at Microsoft, contradicted the rumors by confirming that the company had no plans to open Silverlight. Some controls that ship with Silverlight are available under the
Microsoft Public License
The Shared Source Initiative (SSI) is a source-available software licensing scheme launched by Microsoft in May 2001. The program includes a spectrum of technologies and licenses, and most of its source code offerings are available for download aft ...
as a part of a separate project known as the ''Silverlight Toolkit''.
Silverlight's