Microsoft announced the debut of Silverlight, a new and impressive cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for IE, Mozilla and Safari that is supposed to replace Adobe’s Flash player in delivering RIAs.
April 16, 2007 (Press Release) --
Unveiled on April 15 at National Association of Broadcasters conference (NAB2007), Silverlight already benefits from the early support of companies like Akamai Technologies Inc., Brightcove Inc., Eyeblaster Inc., Limelight Networks, Major League Baseball and Netflix Inc.
Silverlight was previously known as Windows Presentation Foundation Everywhere (WPF/E). Windows Presentation Foundation (which in its turn was code-named Avalon in Windows Vista’s early stages of development) is the new strategic graphics subsystem in Windows that provides a unified approach to user interface, 2D and 3D graphics, documents and media. Built on the .NET Framework foundation and utilizing Direct3D for vector-based rendering, WPF provides a powerful solution for building immersive applications of all kinds. Furthermore, Windows Presentation Foundation enables designers to be an integral part of the development process by providing declarative programming models for "toolability" and flexibility.
According to Microsoft, Silverlight integrates with existing Web technologies and assets to provide higher-quality experiences with lower costs for media delivery. Silverlight will be available for both Windows and Macintosh, as a cross-browser plug-in for Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and Safari.
Bob Muglia, senior vice president of the Server and Tools Business at Microsoft, said that Microsoft’s decision to work at Silverlight was determined by companies’ request for a cheap, cross-platform delivery of their content: “Content providers are seeking a way to deliver rich interactive applications using the tools and skills they already have. They want an end-to-end solution that enables them to rapidly reach multiple platforms with reasonable deployment costs. Microsoft Silverlight delivers on this need and marks a real step forward for the industry. Silverlight is the only solution in the market today that enables content creators to tap into the broad ecosystem for Windows Media technologies while taking the Web’s rich interactive application experience to new levels.”
Leading media companies and solution providers have announced support for Silverlight including Akamai Technologies, Brightcove, Eyeblaster, Limelight Networks, Major League Baseball, NaviSite Inc., Netflix, Pinnacle Systems Inc., Rhozet Corp., Skinkers, Sonic Solutions, Tarari Inc., Telestream Inc. and Winnov. All have indicated plans to deliver Silverlight-based experiences for their viewers and customers.
“With the release of Silverlight, Microsoft is bringing rich interactive experiences coupled with the VC-1 video standard into the browser, and we’re excited to announce plans to support this technology and continue to give our customers access to the cutting-edge technologies that will drive the growth of Internet TV.”
The impressive part when discussing about Silverlight’s merits is the scalability and the versatility of the application. Silverlight uses Windows Media Video (WMV), Microsoft’s implementation of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) VC-1 video standard, enabling immediate compatibility with the millions of hours of content already available on the Web, and adds support for interactive video experiences that scale from full-screen high-definition (HD) to mobile scenarios.
According to Tim Sneath, Windows Vista technical evangelist, “Silverlight is a lightweight subset of XAML for building rich media experiences on the web, which supports playback of WMV files on both PC and Macintosh, with many options for interactivity during playback.” Silverlight is apparently the answer to media sites’ prayers for a player that can be scaled back and forth without losing the position in the video: “it supports full-screen 720p video and offers seamless transitions between full-screen and windowed mode.” Sneath says that “with just a couple of lines of code, you can provide a platform-neutral way to handle all your movie files”.
Sneath describes Silverlight as WPF’s “web-based little brother”, which provides a familiar web metaphor for designers and developers, by separating markup (XAML) from code. “You can embed XAML directly within an HTML file if you want a simple, monolithic solution, or you can keep the two separate to enforce a delineation between different web development roles.”
Apparently, Silverlight and HTML can be integrated seamlessly. “Every XAML element can be accessed or manipulated from the same client-side JavaScript that would be used to interact with any DHTML element: there are no artificial boundaries or barriers, and you can even overlay HTML elements on top of Silverlight content (simply by creating a windowless frame). We'll also make it very easy for an ASP.NET AJAX developer to add Silverlight content.”
Silverlight’s size is only 1MB for PCs, and slightly more for the Macintosh platform, because the Mac version of the plug-in will contain both the PowerPC and the Intel installers. For the moment, Silverlight is only supported by Windows XP, with Windows 2000 support to come. However, according to Tim Sneath, Silverlight is fully liberated from the constraints posed by the two platforms in the client-server paradigm: “There's no difference between the Macintosh and PC runtimes; you don't need any Microsoft software on the server if you don't want to - you can deliver a great Silverlight experience from an Apache / Linux server to a Mac OS 10.4 client.”
“You can embed XAML directly into your HTML pages; there's nothing binary or opaque about the format. There are only three steps necessary to add animation or media to your RIA application: include a standard JavaScript file in your HTML header; call a function to create the Silverlight object anywhere on the screen; add some XAML content for runtime delivery.
You also have full runtime interactivity with Silverlight content. The contents of the XAML file can be completely server-generated, to contain information populated from a database. From JavaScript, it's just a matter of calling the createFromXaml method to add or remove elements dynamically at runtime. There's nothing that you can only create or manipulate at design-time.”
One of Silverlight’s most touted features is the speed of the application: “for example, you can play many videos simultaneously without stuttering or dropping frames (subject to network bandwidth, of course). We're introducing a new video brush in Silverlight that allows you to use video as a texture for any 2D object (a rectangle, an ellipse or a path). This is going to allow designers incredible power to use media in new ways that have never been accessible through other existing technologies.”
Since Silverlight is WPF’s little brother, the compatibility with Microsoft’s new graphics subsystem in Windows is almost total. Windows Presentation Foundation provides a single model that is orthogonal across services like Base Services (XAML, Property System, Input and Eventing, Accessibility), Media Services (2D, 3D, Audio, Video, Text, Imaging, Animation, Effects, Composition Engine ), Document Services (XPS Documents, Open Packaging Conventions ) and User Interface Services (A pplication Services, Deployment, Controls, Layout, Data Binding) and allows seamless integration of content within a single application. You can use the same constructs for animation, data binding and styling, regardless of whether you are targeting 2D, 3D or text content.
Windows Presentation Foundation takes full advantage of the powerful Graphical Processing Units that are part of modern PC systems. At its heart, the composition engine is vector-based, allowing for scaling of all output to match the resolution of a specific machine. The rendering architecture uses Direct3D for all output: on video cards that implement DirectX 7 or later in hardware, Windows Presentation Foundation renders output using the GPU wherever possible. In situations where hardware rendering cannot be used, software rendering is available as a fallback. Lastly, a floating-point logical pixel system and 32-bit ARGB color support provide a rich high-fidelity experience that anticipates future technology needs, such as high-DPI displays.
Microsoft Expression Media Encoder, which will be a feature of Microsoft Expression Media, enables rapid import, compression and Web publishing of digital video imported from a variety of popular formats, including AVI and QuickTime, into WMV. Capable of running on the desktop or Windows Server, Expression Media Encoder is a template-driven system that integrates seamlessly into existing Web publishing workflows for both live and on-demand content delivery. Expression Media Encoder will be a free download for customers of Expression Media when it is shipped later this year.
When paired with a Tarari Encoder Accelerator, Expression Media Encoder reduces encode times by up to 15 times over software alone, a thing which according to Microsoft is a significant capabilities and cost advantage for publishing Web video today.
Microsoft’s broader development platform and additional details about Silverlight will be shared in the keynote presentation at Microsoft’s upcoming Mix07 conference, April 30 in Las Vegas, where Ray Ozzie, Chief Software Architect, Robert Bach, President of Entertainment and Devices Division and Scott Guthrie, General Manager at Microsoft, have announced their participation.
Author: Dan Nicolae Alexa
Source: http://www.playfuls.com/
Silverlight was previously known as Windows Presentation Foundation Everywhere (WPF/E). Windows Presentation Foundation (which in its turn was code-named Avalon in Windows Vista’s early stages of development) is the new strategic graphics subsystem in Windows that provides a unified approach to user interface, 2D and 3D graphics, documents and media. Built on the .NET Framework foundation and utilizing Direct3D for vector-based rendering, WPF provides a powerful solution for building immersive applications of all kinds. Furthermore, Windows Presentation Foundation enables designers to be an integral part of the development process by providing declarative programming models for "toolability" and flexibility.
According to Microsoft, Silverlight integrates with existing Web technologies and assets to provide higher-quality experiences with lower costs for media delivery. Silverlight will be available for both Windows and Macintosh, as a cross-browser plug-in for Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and Safari.
Bob Muglia, senior vice president of the Server and Tools Business at Microsoft, said that Microsoft’s decision to work at Silverlight was determined by companies’ request for a cheap, cross-platform delivery of their content: “Content providers are seeking a way to deliver rich interactive applications using the tools and skills they already have. They want an end-to-end solution that enables them to rapidly reach multiple platforms with reasonable deployment costs. Microsoft Silverlight delivers on this need and marks a real step forward for the industry. Silverlight is the only solution in the market today that enables content creators to tap into the broad ecosystem for Windows Media technologies while taking the Web’s rich interactive application experience to new levels.”
Leading media companies and solution providers have announced support for Silverlight including Akamai Technologies, Brightcove, Eyeblaster, Limelight Networks, Major League Baseball, NaviSite Inc., Netflix, Pinnacle Systems Inc., Rhozet Corp., Skinkers, Sonic Solutions, Tarari Inc., Telestream Inc. and Winnov. All have indicated plans to deliver Silverlight-based experiences for their viewers and customers.
“With the release of Silverlight, Microsoft is bringing rich interactive experiences coupled with the VC-1 video standard into the browser, and we’re excited to announce plans to support this technology and continue to give our customers access to the cutting-edge technologies that will drive the growth of Internet TV.”
The impressive part when discussing about Silverlight’s merits is the scalability and the versatility of the application. Silverlight uses Windows Media Video (WMV), Microsoft’s implementation of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) VC-1 video standard, enabling immediate compatibility with the millions of hours of content already available on the Web, and adds support for interactive video experiences that scale from full-screen high-definition (HD) to mobile scenarios.
According to Tim Sneath, Windows Vista technical evangelist, “Silverlight is a lightweight subset of XAML for building rich media experiences on the web, which supports playback of WMV files on both PC and Macintosh, with many options for interactivity during playback.” Silverlight is apparently the answer to media sites’ prayers for a player that can be scaled back and forth without losing the position in the video: “it supports full-screen 720p video and offers seamless transitions between full-screen and windowed mode.” Sneath says that “with just a couple of lines of code, you can provide a platform-neutral way to handle all your movie files”.
Sneath describes Silverlight as WPF’s “web-based little brother”, which provides a familiar web metaphor for designers and developers, by separating markup (XAML) from code. “You can embed XAML directly within an HTML file if you want a simple, monolithic solution, or you can keep the two separate to enforce a delineation between different web development roles.”
Apparently, Silverlight and HTML can be integrated seamlessly. “Every XAML element can be accessed or manipulated from the same client-side JavaScript that would be used to interact with any DHTML element: there are no artificial boundaries or barriers, and you can even overlay HTML elements on top of Silverlight content (simply by creating a windowless frame). We'll also make it very easy for an ASP.NET AJAX developer to add Silverlight content.”
Silverlight’s size is only 1MB for PCs, and slightly more for the Macintosh platform, because the Mac version of the plug-in will contain both the PowerPC and the Intel installers. For the moment, Silverlight is only supported by Windows XP, with Windows 2000 support to come. However, according to Tim Sneath, Silverlight is fully liberated from the constraints posed by the two platforms in the client-server paradigm: “There's no difference between the Macintosh and PC runtimes; you don't need any Microsoft software on the server if you don't want to - you can deliver a great Silverlight experience from an Apache / Linux server to a Mac OS 10.4 client.”
“You can embed XAML directly into your HTML pages; there's nothing binary or opaque about the format. There are only three steps necessary to add animation or media to your RIA application: include a standard JavaScript file in your HTML header; call a function to create the Silverlight object anywhere on the screen; add some XAML content for runtime delivery.
You also have full runtime interactivity with Silverlight content. The contents of the XAML file can be completely server-generated, to contain information populated from a database. From JavaScript, it's just a matter of calling the createFromXaml method to add or remove elements dynamically at runtime. There's nothing that you can only create or manipulate at design-time.”
One of Silverlight’s most touted features is the speed of the application: “for example, you can play many videos simultaneously without stuttering or dropping frames (subject to network bandwidth, of course). We're introducing a new video brush in Silverlight that allows you to use video as a texture for any 2D object (a rectangle, an ellipse or a path). This is going to allow designers incredible power to use media in new ways that have never been accessible through other existing technologies.”
Since Silverlight is WPF’s little brother, the compatibility with Microsoft’s new graphics subsystem in Windows is almost total. Windows Presentation Foundation provides a single model that is orthogonal across services like Base Services (XAML, Property System, Input and Eventing, Accessibility), Media Services (2D, 3D, Audio, Video, Text, Imaging, Animation, Effects, Composition Engine ), Document Services (XPS Documents, Open Packaging Conventions ) and User Interface Services (A pplication Services, Deployment, Controls, Layout, Data Binding) and allows seamless integration of content within a single application. You can use the same constructs for animation, data binding and styling, regardless of whether you are targeting 2D, 3D or text content.
Windows Presentation Foundation takes full advantage of the powerful Graphical Processing Units that are part of modern PC systems. At its heart, the composition engine is vector-based, allowing for scaling of all output to match the resolution of a specific machine. The rendering architecture uses Direct3D for all output: on video cards that implement DirectX 7 or later in hardware, Windows Presentation Foundation renders output using the GPU wherever possible. In situations where hardware rendering cannot be used, software rendering is available as a fallback. Lastly, a floating-point logical pixel system and 32-bit ARGB color support provide a rich high-fidelity experience that anticipates future technology needs, such as high-DPI displays.
Microsoft Expression Media Encoder, which will be a feature of Microsoft Expression Media, enables rapid import, compression and Web publishing of digital video imported from a variety of popular formats, including AVI and QuickTime, into WMV. Capable of running on the desktop or Windows Server, Expression Media Encoder is a template-driven system that integrates seamlessly into existing Web publishing workflows for both live and on-demand content delivery. Expression Media Encoder will be a free download for customers of Expression Media when it is shipped later this year.
When paired with a Tarari Encoder Accelerator, Expression Media Encoder reduces encode times by up to 15 times over software alone, a thing which according to Microsoft is a significant capabilities and cost advantage for publishing Web video today.
Microsoft’s broader development platform and additional details about Silverlight will be shared in the keynote presentation at Microsoft’s upcoming Mix07 conference, April 30 in Las Vegas, where Ray Ozzie, Chief Software Architect, Robert Bach, President of Entertainment and Devices Division and Scott Guthrie, General Manager at Microsoft, have announced their participation.
Author: Dan Nicolae Alexa
Source: http://www.playfuls.com/
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