Silverlight Revisited

Microsoft continues to make big investments in the Silverlight framework. It is a part of the .NET framework. Silverlight let's you build web applications. There were a huge number of new controls released in the latest version of Silverlight. Third party makers of controls should beware. Microsoft is eating your cake.

The Microsoft controls for Silverlight are solid. Their controls do almost everything that third party controls accomplish. Why is Microsoft doing this? You would think they would not want third party control manufacturer's against them. The answer is that they are gunning for Adobe. They need to ensure that Silverlight has great controls available now.

The Rise of Silverlight 4

The latest installment of Silverlight represents a big upgrade. It utilizes the XAML markup language like WPF. Silverlight is no longer trying to compete with Flash. It is going after the Adobe AIR market.

Initially Silverlight was a web development platform. Now it is being pushed for both the desktop and web environments. A big addition to the technology is MVVM, a model similar to the MVC one.

Silverlight 4 will also support the Manged Extensibility Framework, aka MEF. You had best play around with Silverlight 4 in Visual Studio 2010. That way you can avoid any learning curves which may hamper your productivity later.