Microsoft Silverlight

[MiretanK]

Originally Posted by Wikipedia

Microsoft Silverlight (code-named Windows Presentation Foundation/Everywhere or WPF/E) is a proprietary runtime for browser-based Rich Internet Applications, providing a subset of the animation, vector graphics, and video playback capabilities of Windows Presentation Foundation.

Silverlight integrates multimedia, graphics, animations and interactivity into a single runtime. It is being designed to work in concert with XAML and is scriptable with JavaScript. XAML can be used for marking up the vector graphics and animations. Silverlight supports playback of VC-1 video content across all supported browsers without requiring the Windows Media Player ActiveX control or Windows Media browser plugins. Content created with Silverlight would be more searchable and indexable than that created with Flash as it is not compiled, but represented as text (XAML).Silverlight makes it possible to dynamically load XML content that can be manipulated through a DOM interface, a technique that is consistent with conventional Ajax techniques. Silverlight exposes a Downloader object which can be used to download content, like scripts, media assets or other data, as is required by the application. It also supports common dynamic programming languages like Ruby and Python, which are more flexible and syntactically expressive than JavaScript or ActionScript.

Now what really interests

Silverlight aims to compete with Adobe Flash and the presentation components of Ajax. It also competes with Sun Microsystems' JavaFX, which was launched a few days after Silverlight. The first CTP of Silverlight was released in December 2006. Microsoft aims to have a final release by mid-2007. An unattributed report claimed that Microsoft aims to release certain parts of Silverlight source code as open source software, but the claim has been denied by Microsoft. Sam Ramji, Microsoft director of platform technology strategy, said Microsoft has no plans to open Silverlight. However, portions of the Dynamic Language Runtime, included with Silverlight, have been made available on Microsoft's CodePlex website using the Microsoft Permissive License.

Source

Get the plugin here and try it here, for example.

Guess Flash has a new rival.

[Silenus]

Sounds interesting.
Any shots on how it is?

[MiretanK]

Some shots. I've installed it on FF.

Btw there are more sites that uses the Silverlight... I'll try finding them.

[Proto]

Yeah right. Welcome to the world, Zune 2

[Balthazard]

Looks good. Cant install it though. It supports only Win and Mac.

[Proto]

As expected from Micro$osft, should I say? With some luck this will meet the same fate as most of their 'alternatives'.

PS: On a second look it looks Miguel de Icaza is interested in releasing a port of his own,

[Coolsvilleman]

Tried it awhile ago. Ya its ok, but nothing ground breaking.