Silverlight Details Emerge, Expression Studio Ships

New details on Silverlight, Microsoft’s cross-platform, cross-browser subset of the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), show that although the initial release of Silverlight is aimed at Internet video, the ultimate goal is a platform for Rich Internet Applications (RIAs), Web applications that have features and functionality traditionally associated with desktop applications but run locally in a Web browser through a browser plug-in. RIAs have the potential to help corporate developers build better full-feature browser-based applications and Silverlight could help Microsoft ensure that Windows remains the best platform for creating, hosting, and running RIAs.

Two-Stage Strategy

Currently in their infancy, RIAs pose the same long-term threat to Microsoft that Java did: if they become widely used in place of desktop applications, they could make alternate OSs, such as the Mac and Linux, more practical for consumers and business users and dampen demand for OS upgrades. (For a chart comparing RIAs with other types of applications, see “Rich Internet Applications Comparison“.) The dominant platform for creating RIAs is Adobe’s Flash, which has no particular connection to Windows or Microsoft’s development platform.