Silverlight 5 introduces more than 40 new features, including support for running Silverlight applications with desktop features in the browser, dramatic video quality and performance improvements, and features that improve developer productivity.

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Silverlight is a powerful development platform for creating engaging, interactive applications for many screens across the Web, desktop, and mobile devices.

  • Silverlight: The Silverlight Team is hiring developers! Check out open positions and apply now: http://bit.ly/fnk3sN
    12:22 PM, December 8, 2010

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What's New

  • Check out Native Extensions 1.0 for Microsoft Silverlight
    06:31 PM, December 7, 2010

    Native Extensions for Microsoft Silverlight is a new toolkit that enables your Silverlight 4 out-of-browser applications to interact with cool Windows 7 features like sensors, speech, devices, taskbar etc. Download and try it out today, and let us know what you think.
  • Download the Visual Studio LightSwitch Beta 1 today!
    08:37 PM, August 23, 2010

    Microsoft® Visual Studio® LightSwitch™ gives you a simpler and faster way to create professional-quality Silverlight business applications for the desktop, the Web, and the cloud. Download and try the first beta of the new member of the Visual Studio Family today!
  • Watch Sessions and the Keynote from the Silverlight 4 Launch
    10:32 PM, June 6, 2010

    Missed the Silverlight 4 Launch at DevConnections?  Watch sessions on-demand here and Scott Guthrie's keynote on-demand here.
  • Silverlight 4 is Now Available
    05:48 PM, April 15, 2010

    Download Silverlight 4 here!

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Better For Your Business

Companies of all kinds use Silverlight to build interactive applications and deliver flawless streaming media to audiences on all types of screens, wherever the Web works. See the power of Silverlight in action and get inspired by clicking on a case study above.

Powerful Platform

Learn how Silverlight’s innovative technology and rich feature set can grow your business, your productivity and your profitability. Create a design once, and deliver it seamlessly to browsers, screens and devices of all kinds.

More About Silverlight

Get Productive Immediately

Microsoft provides a broad range of free resources to get your team started with Silverlight. Download white papers, starter kits, trial downloads and more, and tap into the vast Silverlight community.

Get Started Now

Why Use Silverlight?

  • Engage users with exciting visualization tools, high-quality graphics and interactive applications
  • Deliver flawless HD streaming video to all kinds of screens: most major browsers, operating systems, set-top boxes and mobile devices
  • Protect valuable content both online and offline with built-in DRM features
  • Stream existing content without transcoding

Deliver True High Definition Video To Many Screens

Make the most of your content through flawless media experiences, with high-definition video delivered through live and on-demand IIS Smooth Streaming. These enhanced experiences can include DVR capabilities, slow-motion, multiple camera angles, alternate language tracks, and in-stream data feeds. Silverlight and IIS also provide advanced analytics and business intelligence, increasing a content provider's opportunity for monetization.

See IIS Smooth Streaming In Action

Key Media Features

IIS Smooth Streaming

Extend viewing times using IIS Smooth Streaming. Adjust the quality in real-time based upon the consumer’s changing bandwidth and CPU conditions. Get minimal buffering and quick start-up time using HTTP-based adaptive streaming.

Extensible Media Formats

With the new Raw AV pipeline, Silverlight can easily support a wide variety of third-party codecs. Audio and video can be decoded outside the runtime and rendered in Silverlight, extending format support beyond the native codecs.

Media Whitepapers

Media Resources

Why Use Silverlight?

  • Build on familiar, industrial-strength Microsoft tools and platforms
  • Create rich media applications that are accessible, discoverable by search engines, and highly secure
  • Increase user productivity and accuracy by providing an attractive, easy-to-use application user interface that mimics the behavior of desktop software applications
  • Inspire repeat visits and brand loyalty with compelling, high-performance Web experiences

Silverlight: The Right Choice for Business

Companies of all kinds and all sizes are using the power of Silverlight to reach audiences in new ways. To see how Silverlight is being used in the real world, click on the link below. Applications built with Silverlight naturally integrate with your existing SharePoint Server, Internet Information Services (IIS) and Microsoft Office backend systems while enabling the latest rich media features like HD video and interactivity. Bring rich Web-based or desktop applications to market quicker by using Visual Studio, .NET and other familiar technologies.

See More Success Stories Here

Key Business Features

Out of Browser

Silverlight 3 offers a new set of features for building light-weight, sandboxed companion experiences for the Web that run on the desktop. Silverlight out of browser allows websites to build even closer, persistent relationships with customers. It enables...

Perspective 3D Graphics

Silverlight 3 allows developers and designers to apply content to a 3D plane. Users can rotate or scale live content in space without writing any additional code. Other effects include creating a queue in 3D and transitions.

Business Resources

Why Use Silverlight?

  • Create rich Internet applications that go way beyond HTML, with support for 2D vector graphics, streaming video, animation, HD video, interactivity and more
  • Write code once and enjoy compatibility across many platforms, browsers, and devices
  • Develop applications rapidly using the technology and skills you have today, reducing the need to replace tools, servers or people
  • Pivot makes it easier to interact with massive amounts of data on the Web in new and dramatic ways

Developing for Silverlight

Microsoft Silverlight is a single, .NET based development platform for creating engaging, interactive applications across the Web, desktop, and mobile devices. Only Silverlight offers the same programming model, a free download and a common toolset targeting a wide range of browsers, operating systems and devices enables developers to write code once and optimize across many screens.


Key Development Features

Out of Browser

Silverlight 3 offers a new set of features for building light-weight, sandboxed companion experiences for the Web that run on the desktop. Silverlight out of browser allows websites to build even closer, persistent relationships with customers. It enables...

New Controls

Silverlight 3 is packed with over 60 high-quality, fully skinnable and customizable out-of-the-box controls such as charting and media, new layout containers such as dock and viewbox, and controls such as autocomplete, treeview and datagrid...

Development Resources

Why Use Silverlight?

  • Synchronize the workflow between designers and developers
  • Create applications and add interactivity without writing code
  • Deliver uniquely styled and branded applications across many screens
  • Use SketchFlow to quickly experiment with layout, flow, and transitions, making it easy to create and iterate on prototypes

Designing for Silverlight

Create user experiences using the innovative Expression Studio design environment. Built from the ground up, Expression Studio helps designers and developers to produce interactive Silverlight websites and rich media assets efficiently. Design a broad range of Web sites and applications with an extensive set of rich media content types, from vector/bitmap graphics, text, video and audio to key frame-based animation and effects plus breakthrough Silverlight features like DeepZoom, Pivot and Smooth Streaming.

See how easily Silverlight and Expression Blend can streamline your design and development efforts, and take your ideas from concept to reality faster than ever before.

Learn more about Expression Blend

Key Design Features

SketchFlow

SketchFlow, part of Expression Studio Ultimate, revolutionizes the speed and efficiency with which you can demonstrate a vision for an application. SketchFlow provides an informal and quick way to explore, iterate and prototype user interface scenarios...

Deep Zoom

The new Deep Zoom technology in Silverlight allows users to see images on the Web as never before. The smooth, in-place zooming and panning that Deep Zoom allows is a true advancement and raises the bar on what image viewing should be...

Design Starter Kits

Design Resources

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