Silverlight 5 Available for Download

[qubit]

Today, we’re happy to announce the release of Silverlight 5. Silverlight is part of a rich offering of technologies from Microsoft helping developers deliver applications for the web, desktop and mobile devices. Download Silverlight 5, a free plug-in less than 7 MB in size that can be installed in less than 10 seconds.

New features in Silverlight 5 include Hardware Decode of H.264 media, which provides a significant performance improvement with decoding of unprotected content using the GPU; Postscript Vector Printing to improve output quality and file size; and an improved graphics stack with 3D support that uses the XNA API on the Windows platform to gain low-level access to the GPU for drawing vertex shaders and low-level 3D primitives.

In addition, Silverlight 5 extends the ‘Trusted Application’ model to the browser for the first time. These features, when enabled via a group policy registry key and an application certificate, mean users won’t need to leave the browser to perform complex tasks such as multiple window support, full trust support in browser including COM and file system access, in browser HTML hosting within Silverlight, and P/Invoke support for existing native code to be run directly from Silverlight.

For more information, visit the Microsoft Silverlight site. For additional information on support policy, visit Microsoft Silverlight Support Lifecycle Policy.

The Silverlight Team

[deleted]

Now that we have 64-bit plugins for Flash, Java, and Silverlight, there really is no reason to continue using a 32-bit browser.

[LAN_deRf_HA]

I thought Microsoft had expressed a desire to ditch this for HTML5, a welcome change. Like we need more redundant junk to download. Last time I needed silverlight was the only time I needed it, right after it launched when MS was still in the "let's bride somebody to use this" phase.

[Wrigleyvillain]

Indeed. Along the lines of Flash for mobile (it's a start) let's kill this crap.

[hellrazor]

Did anybody here EVER give ANY amount crap about silverlight at ANY point in history?

[RejZoR]

SkyDrive worked better when it was designed for Silverlight... Now i can't even link to a specific file, it just links to the whole folder which is dumb as hell. That's how much i know Silverlight was better ahahaha

[Rexter]

Just want to throw my two cents in here:

Ive programmed a little with silverlight, not much but enough to get the feel of it, and personally i think it would be a better alternative to flash (if we ignore html5 for a minute). Its more optimized, better performing, native h264 support ages before flash, and well just better in every regard than flash. And that it even has low level access to XNA libraries is brilliant.
Though i can understand why it havent been adopted to such a degree and thats more microsofts fault (like no osx and linux support etc. etc.).

At least they are keeping it for windows phone 7 which is bloody awesome as it makes it dead easy to program the GUI.

[qubit]

Originally Posted by LAN_deRf_HA

I thought Microsoft had expressed a desire to ditch this for HTML5, a welcome change. Like we need more redundant junk to download. Last time I needed silverlight was the only time I needed it, right after it launched when MS was still in the "let's bride somebody to use this" phase.

Yeah, the only time I can remember needing it, was on Microsoft's MSN site.

Originally Posted by Rexter

Just want to throw my two cents in here:

Ive programmed a little with silverlight, not much but enough to get the feel of it, and personally i think it would be a better alternative to flash (if we ignore html5 for a minute). Its more optimized, better performing, native h264 support ages before flash, and well just better in every regard than flash. And that it even has low level access to XNA libraries is brilliant.
Though i can understand why it havent been adopted to such a degree and thats more microsofts fault (like no osx and linux support etc. etc.).

At least they are keeping it for windows phone 7 which is bloody awesome as it makes it dead easy to program the GUI.

This is another fine example of where technical excellence doesn't win out, for various reasons.