Clearly, Microsoft is putting a lot of energy into Silverlight. The product, best described as a cross-browser, cross-platform implementation of the .NET Framework, is growing up. It gives the appearance of having been produced by a more progressive and less process-bound company than Microsoft: The excitement is still there. The scope of the product has increased greatly, and has grown out from its initial remit of providing a platform for rich interactive multi-media web-applications within a browser add-in. It is becoming able to support the entire spectrum of applications from games, through business to the scientific, on a PC or Mac.

The Silverlight 3 features that were announced for the Beta at MIX09 have wide implications. Probably the most significant introduction into Silverlight 3 are the .NET RIA services. These are designed to bring together the ASP.NET and Silverlight platforms by providing a pattern to write application logic that runs on the mid-tier and controls access to data for queries, changes and custom operations. It also makes the bread-and-butter tasks of data validation, authentication and roles much easier by integrating with Silverlight components on the client and also with ASP.NET on the mid-tier. If you add to this the new Data controls, including a DataPager and a DataForm, and you have a simple, versatile, platform that you can confidently use in client-server applications.

Silverlight applications are likely to look better. Cleartype support will be in, there are a number of new controls, some glorious Pixel shaders, and the perspective 3D support is much better. You’d have thought that we’d be immune to the ‘ponytail’ features offered by animation easing, offering bouncy and wobbly menus and buttons, but somehow, Silverlight encourages experimentation, and it is nice to know that you can use these features when you want.

Clearly, Microsoft have been startled by the popularity of Adobe Air, and so the ‘out of browser’ feature is an important way of outflanking it within the Windows Platform. A Silverlight 3 application can run as a desktop application, even on a Mac if it subscribes to a series of APIs and defines the application in the manifest. If you combine this with the ‘Network Status’ API that tells you when the network isn’t or is available, you have an easy way of creating an ‘occasionally-connected’ application that can adapt to online/offline working.

Although you cannot compare such different technologies as Adobe Air and Silverlight, it will be fascinating to see if developers succeed in using Silverlight to create applications that are as compelling as some of the Adobe Air applications. This will be the acid test. In the meantime, the Silverlight 3 Beta is well worth a look.

Cheers,

Laila