Updated: August 4, 2020 (October 20, 2008)

Silverlight 2 Now Available

As managing vice president, Rob Helm covers Microsoft collaboration and content management. His 25-plus years of experience analyzing Microsoft’s technology... more

Silverlight 2, available now, substantially improves Microsoft’s platform for rich Internet applications (RIAs), interactive graphical applications delivered over the Web that run in a browser plug-in. It also enables developers to build Silverlight applications with Microsoft’s .NET Framework languages and tools, which makes the technology more attractive to developers and more competitive with Adobe Flash.

Between Desktop and Web

RIAs are attractive because they can deliver graphics and responsiveness on par with desktop applications, but require no installation on the client other than the RIA platform’s browser plug-in. RIAs can’t replace desktop applications completely—for example, they can’t fully access a computer’s file system for security reasons—but they offer a useful compromise between HTML-based Web applications and full desktop clients. By building Silverlight to compete with Adobe Flash, Microsoft gains an RIA platform that is cross-platform, but that steers developers toward Microsoft tools and APIs.

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