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Microsoft debuted the Silverlight 3 beta in March at its MIX09 conference and highlighted its ability to run Silverlight applications outside the browser for the first time. Silverlight 3 also includes several new 3-D effects that previously required significant heavy lifting from developers.
Silverlight represents Microsoft's desire to grab market share from Adobe's Flash by offering better-looking, more advanced display and interactive functionality, as well as better tooling support. Silverlight's programming model supports Visual Basic, C# and a number of dynamic languages, including Python and Ruby. Microsoft's Visual Studio and Expression IDEs allow .Net developers to work with Silverlight using tools with which they're already familiar.
When Microsoft launched Silverlight 1.0 in 2007, the buzz in the development community was that Microsoft hadn't done enough to make it a true competitor to Flash. But Microsoft made great strides with Silverlight 2.0, launched last September, and Silverlight 3 looks like Microsoft's coming-out party in the RIA space.
Earlier this year, an Adobe executive claimed that Silverlight's influence in the market is dwindling. Silverlight "has really fizzled out in the last six to nine months, I'd say ... We're innovating ahead of [Microsoft], and they have not been able to catch up," Mark Garrett, Adobe's executive vice president and CFO, told attendees at the Thomas Weisel Partners Technology & Telecom Conference.
But Silverlight, despite its strong showing as the media player of choice for the Beijing Olympics, has run into difficulties that have impaired its challenge to Flash's dominance. Last November, Major League Baseball dumped Silverlight for Flash, and in February, Netflix users reported choppy video performance and audio synchronization issues related to Netflix's Silverlight-based video player.
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