Silverlight & The Next Generation of Automotive Software
For those of you who have never heard of Silverlight, you should consider taking a few minutes to learn a little about it. Silverlight will be on websites everywhere in the near future.
Silverlight is a new technology from Microsoft. Silverlight is a next generation enterprise platform for creating "rich internet applications". In many ways, Silverlight is similar to Adobe Flash which is used on a lot of websites today. The big difference between Silverlight and Flash is the underlying development tools and technology used to develop the software. Silverlight has superior development tools for creating enterprise applications. Silverlight is a small browser plug-in that has be installed on your computer like Flash.
So will Silverlight replace Flash? In the long run it could, but in the short term Silverlight will find its home primarily in online software applications. Over time Silverlight will make its way to more universal consumer uses once it becomes more common place for the average consumer to have it installed on their computer. Silverlight does work with Internet Explorer, FireFox, and Safari. It also works on both Windows PCs and Macs! You can probably expect Silverlight to be bundled with Internet Explorer 8 and the next version of Microsoft Windows. It is also showing up as an optional install in windows updates.
How about some examples?
Kelley Blue Book has a cool tool on their website that uses Silverlight:
http://www.kbb.com/kbb/PerfectCarFinder/PhotoEdition.aspx
There are a lot of cool Silverlight examples on this website:
http://silverlight.net/showcase/
So where can you learn more?
http://www.silverlight.net
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silverlight
VinSolutions is actively creating software with Silverlight as we continue to push the envelope for automotive software.
October 13th, 2008 at 9:19 pm
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