Exploring Microsoft's Attempt to Revolutionize the Web Ben Stroud CS525 Spring 10

 What is Silverlight?  Purpose  Developing With Silverlight  Comparison to Flash  Future Directions  Questions 4/23/2010 Stroud 2

 Multiplatform application framework  Allows for interactive multimedia and animations on the front end  Powerful traditional application or web oriented backend.  Designed primarily for web based applications; stand-alone apps possible []  Similar to Flash  Created by Microsoft 4/23/2010 Stroud 3

 Short Term ◦ Microsoft wants a foothold in the highly dynamic content driven web based application realm. ◦ They want a platform that promotes their proprietary technologies(.Net Framework, Windows Media, MS IDEs, etc).  Long Term ◦ Cynical View  Embrace, Extend, Extinguish[]  Microsoft may want to displace Adobe’s Flash technology with something requiring MS technology ◦ Optimistic View  Microsoft wants to enhance the web experience with more powerful and more efficient applications. ◦ Likely that both are true (business vs tech) 4/23/2010 Stroud 4

 We are interested in Multimedia Computing  Silverlight can do things that other platforms can’t  The web experience is moving to more and more interactive and dynamic content[]. 4/23/2010 Stroud 5

 IDEs ◦ Silverlight 4 – Visual Studios 2010, Visual Web Developer 2008, MS Expression Blend  Coding ◦ Languages – any.NET or Dynamic (Ruby, Python etc) language, HTML, JS and more  Deployment ◦ Upload XAP (executable) Plus Support Files to Web Server. ◦ Client Side Execution 4/23/2010 Stroud 6

 Performance ◦ Back-End Computing  Calculating Prime Numbers ( )  Flash –1.259 seconds  Silverlight seconds ◦ Front End Animation  Displaying 50 Rotating Images  Flash – 64 fps 60% CPU  Silverlight – 100 fps 45% CPU  Took 80 images to get to 64fps ◦ For More Comparisons See Paper 4/23/2010 Stroud 7

 Implementation on More Platforms (Linux, Andriod, Windows Mobile, ect)  Hardware Accelerated 3D Support  64-bit support  More Advanced Networking Capability  Better use of Dynamic Objects  More Generic, Less Silverlight Targeted Code ◦ Combine WPF and Silverlight Programming Models 4/23/2010 Stroud 8

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 See full Report 4/23/2010 Stroud10