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Microsoft Silverlight and Expression Hit the Big 3 Mark

By Geoff Spick  | Published Jul 14, 2009

Microsoft Silverlight and Expression Hit the Big 3 Mark

Microsoft (news, site) hits the difficult third album with its would-be web framework king and development systems — Silverlight 3 and Expression 3. What's new under the hood for those wanting to make a splash online?

Let the Web Battles Commence

Microsoft Silverlight (said charitably)  had a difficult first release, made some improvements in the sophomore effort and is now, if you scour the opinions of testers and pundits on the web, pretty much the real deal.

Microsoft Expression, on the other hand, entered a crowded market as a design tool and is still struggling to make itself stand out from the competition. Will the rise of Silverlight help give it a leg up?

So, for different reasons, Microsoft needs to make a big impression for both products. You may have already come across Silverlight 3 on some sites during its test phase.

Recently, it was seen in action on the NBC's Wimbledon (and the upcoming U.S. Open) tennis coverage or something a little more spectacular like this bandwidth streaming demo.

Silverlight 3 Features

The feature list for Silverlight is impressive, and it has to compete with the likes of Flash and Adobe AIR. Offering multi-threaded, multi-core hardware support, hi-def video, out-of-browser applications and a blizzard of video features, it is truly a modern framework aimed at the current and next generation of online content. Silverlight can be tied into other systems via IronPython, IronRuby, JavaScript and, of course, .NET.

Silverlight changes and adapts the video quality of a media file based on available bandwidth and CPU conditions in order to deliver an optimized viewing experience. This provides support for live and on-demand true HD (720p+) streaming. Video giant Netflix first employed the platform in 2007 to power its instant viewing service.

All of this technology and verve wouldn't add up to much without a decent creation system. And this is where Expression steps in.

Expression 3's Role

Expression Web 3 and Expression Studio 3 help designers create sites and Silverlight projects. Expression Blend is a Studio tool for moving a prototype site or application through the design phases to realization.

New to Blend 3 is SketchFlow, which allows for the expression of ideas, prototypes to be created, work across teams, companies or with clients and testing. Designers can use SketchFlow to model the navigation within an application in a very visual manner, from standard flow notation to a full working mock-up.

The Silverlight plug-in, to get users trying your creations, is available for Mac, Windows and Linux. It is just a 4MB download.

Microsoft claims Silverlight is installed on one third of machines, still some way off Flash's 99% penetration numbers. Expression Studio and Design are available individually, or as a pack.

Developers are gathering at the Silverlight.net home page for advice and information. More details are coming out at the WPC09 event.

 
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3 Reader Comments

1 | brudinie — July 14, 2009 9:36 AM

Lets get something straight - Silverlight is NOT available for Linux.
Novells crappy Moonlight version is available for Linux and it will always be 1.5 versions behind Silverlight.

So if you want to develop applications for the web - make sure you pick a technology that is truly platform agnostic, I suggest xhtml, css and javascript.

As long as the current trend of W3C standards advocation and adoption amongst professional web developers continues, Silverlight is doomed!

Silverlight is not a web technology - it is a browser plug in. Anyone who develops a silverlight application needs to understand this. You are not a web developer until you understand W3C ratified technologies, period.

2 | Sam — July 14, 2009 2:54 PM

brundinie,

Moonlight is Silverlight for Linux. It doesn't matter if its one version behind for a while. As long as the end user has the experience of a RIA with few less features - it really doesn't matter.

Silverlight and Flash are both plug-ins. If you are bragging about being a "web developer" by limiting yourself to older technologies like xhtml, css and javascript - keep it to yourself. There are some who want to move on to develop better applications for users and businesses instead of arguing about who is a web developer.

As far as your opinion goes about Silverlight being doomed - I think if you don't move on, you sure will be!

3 | Steve — July 22, 2009 5:09 PM

Girls, girls, girls, no need to argue over minor details. The question I have is about Expression Web 3. I started with FrontPage back in 1999 and made the switch over to Expression Web 1 almost 3 years ago, and now I'm considering upgrading to Expression web 3.

Should I through the Microsoft software in the recycling Bin and learn Dreamweaver and Flash, otherwise known as CS4, or should I give Bill another chance?

I loved FrontPage 2002, back when it had streaming Media and all kinds of fun toys, but 2003 started removing stuff, even though it added a split view, IE; half Design and half Code view, but all and all FrontPage 2002 was my favorite, of course that was way back when we were in the dinasour days and more people had AOL dial up for $24. per month and 256 mg's of ram were more than enough for the average application, but now that things are more sophisticated it also takes more ram, broadband and even hard drive space.

Yeah, yeah, I know FrontPage was like riding a tricycle with training wheels on it and Dreamweaver was for the big boys, but if it works then why change it?

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