For those that still don't know what Silverlight is, here's the short version. It's "a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of .NET based media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web. Silverlight offers a flexible programming model that supports AJAX, VB, C#, Python, and Ruby, and integrates with existing Web applications. Silverlight supports fast, cost-effective delivery of high-quality video to all major browsers running on the Mac OS or Windows". This is taken from the official web site. Still not clear what it is? Well it's basically Microsoft's response to Abobe's Flash technology and their attempt to take over their market. And it's a pretty good attempt if you ask me. The Silverlight plug-in brings a lot of great features that allow programmers to incorporate more and more ideas into their applications. Although it's still relatively young technology, it has set a decent foundation and has gathered quite a lot of admirers. But enough about that.Nokia announced in in a press release on March 04, 2008 their "plans to make Microsoft Silverlight available for S60 on Symbian OS, the world's leading smartphone software, as well as for Series 40 devices and Nokia Internet tablets. That sound pretty good, considering the fact that everyone loves rich media applications and eye-candy effects. If you can have them on your mobile phone or other portable device and they can run smoothly then it's perfect. I personally am a great supporter of JAVA applications on mobile devices, but from a graphics point of view, it just doesn't have what it takes. Another solution would be Adobe's Flash, but even Steve Jobs, CEO at Apple stated, talking about the iPhone: "don't expect support for Adobe's Flash technology anytime soon". That's because it doesn't have the speed required to work on devices limited to such a low processing power.
But apart from that, even if I'm not a huge fan of anything that Microsoft launches, it looks like their Silverlight technology is heading in the right direction. We'll just have to wait how everything works out. Microsoft will demonstrate Silverlight on S60 during the opening keyote at Microsoft's MIX08 conference on March 5 in Las Vegas, so if there will be anything else that needs to be added, I'll get back to you.
