Tonight Microsoft Evangelist Zain Naboulsi presented at our local .NET user group (DNUG) on Silverlight 2.0. Zain gave a good run-down of the improvements in 2.0 and a good description of when it makes sense to use Silverlight (and when it doesn't).
Silverlight is an interactive media experience for the web that utilizes XAML behind-the-scenes to allow you to create a rich yet extensible user experience. Silverlight can be thought of as a trimmed down version of full-on WPF. The plug-in is currently somewhere around 2 MB, which is phenominal for what you can do with it (and also compared to competitor Flash), and at least with 2.0 it seems to really be built with both developers and designers in mind.
Before I forget, Silverlight can not only run in IE but also Safari, Firefox, various Linux browsers, and more through Microsoft's Moonlight plug-in.
1.0 focused on video because that's what Microsoft could wow us with and get the most bang for the buck, and it still does a great job of it, but now they've added a lot more controls that can be used to enhance an overall experience, not to mention developer-related enhancements such as data-binding, cryptography, regular expressions, basic file I/O, and much more.
Zain gave several good examples on creating Silverlight 2.0 applications to run within web sites and even one on how to bind to data retrieved from a web service. Obviously he has done this a few times and knows each step that needs to be done but I was impressed with how easy it was to get something setup once you are familiar with it.
I asked Zain if 2.0 had much in the way of search engine indexing support and his response was that was continued to be developed and it can be done now but it's pretty tricky so look for it to be improved upon. I also asked if all of the controls available in Silverlight allowed templates, like the ones in his demo's, and he said to his knowledge they did, whereas only some ASP.NET web controls supported templates. He said he was almost certain they would at least handle CSS templates if not actual structure templates.
Although I doubt I will use Silverlight in many if any applications at work I could definitely see some fun home projects or side projects making use of this new tool.
If you ever get a chance to meet Zain and/or hear him speak I highly recommend it. He's a great speaker: very candid and entertaining, knowledgable, and always willing to answer questions. On top of all that, he brought a bunch of free software and other swag to give away at the meeting so extra thanks go to him for supporting us.
The Silverlight web site not only has information about the product but also a great showcase of various web sites and applications utilizing the technology. To develop Silverlight applications you will need a copy of Visual Studio and/or to do some of the really cool stuff you'll need Expression Studio or at least Expression Blend. I don't know if the various Express versions of Visual Studio will handle Silverlight so feel free to comment if you know more.
Zain, if you happen to stumble across this post please feel free to leave comments or contact me with any corrections or important omissions!
