Microsoft showed off their Flash competitor called Silverlight at this year's NAB event. Flash is now the most popular way to deliver video and interactive content over the web and Microsoft refuses to be left out. Silverlight promises to do things impossible with Flash while staying cross platform - a rarity for Microsoft technology.
The Silverlight plug-in can be installed on both Macs and PCS and works on IE, Firefox and Safari. Highly optimized and lightweight (less than 2MB), Silverlight does something Flash can't - stream full HD 720p video. Videos can easily toggle between fullscreen and windowed mode without have to start the stream over, another advantage over Flash. Just light Flash, video interfaces can be customized but it's all built with vectors and AJAX making scalability another key advantage.
Microsoft is currently offering a preview version of the plug-in with all kinds of content for you to try out. Building applications to play in Silverlight couldn't be easier since Microsoft is also offering their full suite of web and design software called Expression Studio for free.
So if you're a web guru looking for a better way to deliver media experiences, give it a try. If you're still unconvinced, hit the jump and check out the video demo.
A very good idea on paper, but once it's boggled down with Microsofts featle attempts on building new standards, with no consideration of user experience, and craptastic foundation on which to build the thing — I'm not really sure it's the "better way to deliver media experiences" after all... Sorry.
(Oh, yeah... I also wrote this.)
amusing that it was shown to us using a flash video XD