Datasheet

Part I: Illuminating Silverlight

After the plug-in is installed, visiting any site that hosts a Silverlight application

causes Silverlight to start up in the browser seamlessly. The plug-in itself is

around 4MB, and in addition to the Silverlight runtime (which is responsible

for running the Silverlight application), the application itself needs to be

downloaded from the site that hosts the application. Modern popular browsers

such as Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, and Chrome support Silverlight

while running on Microsoft’s Windows operating systems 2003, XP, Vista,

and 7) or on Apple’s Mac OS X. Recently, Silverlight has also been rewritten

to run on browsers in Linux-based operating systems. With Silverlight 4, the

application can also run as a stand-alone application — that is, it can be run

outside the browser.

Obtaining and installing Silverlight on your computer is quite simple. All you

have to do is visit a Silverlight-enabled site and it will prompt you to install

Silverlight. Figure 1-1 shows a site that uses Silverlight. As soon as you visit

the site using a Web browser, the browser prompts you to install Silverlight.

Figure 1-1:

Site

prompting

Silverlight

installation.

All you have to do is click the button to install and you are done. A Silverlight

installation is around 4.7MB and needs to be installed only once. If you

visit the same site again or another site that uses Silverlight, you are not

prompted to reinstall it.

Checking Out Some Silverlight-

Enhanced Sites

So, what do Silverlight applications look like? You can find a good example at

the Hard Rock Café Memorabilia site (http://memorabilia.hardrock.

com/), shown in Figure 1-2. This site contains photographs of some of the

memorabilia that Hard Rock Café owns.

05_524657-ch01.indd 1005_524657-ch01.indd 10 3/31/10 11:37 AM3/31/10 11:37 AM