Microsoft Takes The Wraps Off Silverlight 3 Beta

At the MIX 09 conference in Las Vegas, Microsoft walked developers through the advancements it has made in Silverlight 3, many of which will go a long way toward counteracting Adobe's recent claims that Silverlight's influence in the market is dwindling.

Dave Meeker, user experience strategy lead at Roundarch, a Chicago-based Web development firm that works extensively with Silverlight and Flash, was surprised by the advancements Microsoft has made in the latest release.

In addition to support for Silverlight applications running outside the browser, developers can now use threads within Silverlight apps to boost performance and increase application responsiveness, a capability that isn't yet supported in Flash, Meeker said.

"Silverlight has not only made up ground on Flash, it's also moving into the world of Adobe AIR," Meeker said. "Now that Microsoft is looking at building these kinds of applications, you don't need to be a hardcore programmer."

The Silverlight 3 beta includes several new 3-D effects that previously required "a lot of heavy lifting" from developers, and Silverlight 3 is on track to natively support H.264 video, according to Meeker. "We already knew Silverlight was good with video, but this is another significant push forward," he said.

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 there's reason to believe that Silverlight 3 will do the same.

However, Silverlight, which had a strong showing as the media player of choice for the Beijing Olympics, has taken a few hits over performance issues in recent months. Major League Baseball dumped Silverlight for Flash last November, and earlier this month Netflix users reported choppy video performance and audio synchronization issues related to Netflix's Silverlight-based video player.