CALL ON MILLIONS OF EXISTING DEVELOPERS AND THOUSANDS OF BUSINESSES ALREADY FAMILIAR WITH .NET DEVELOPMENT TO HELP CREATE AND DEPLOY SILVERLIGHT APPLICATIONS.

Silverlight has gained strong industry support from content creators, distributors, software vendors, and solution providers. Over 85 companies now support Silverlight via the Silverlight Partner Initiative, and major enterprises and media companies are announcing plans to integrate Silverlight into their online experiences, promising to truly light up the Web for viewers and end users.

Since Silverlight is tightly integrated with .NET, millions of developers using Microsoft developer technologies today for desktop and Web-based RIAs can transfer their skills quickly to Silverlight development. Today, millions of developers use .NET technologies, making it easy to find a developer with the right skills.
In addition, the Visual Studio Industry Partner program (270+ VSIP partners, 25 VSTS partners) provides 800+ VSIP packages and 10,000 Visual Studio Add-Ins. Organizations developing and deploying Silverlight applications can draw on existing internal skills and tools but also leverage the thriving ecosystem built around .NET for a wide range of services and products to ensure success:

  • Partners skilled in supplying .NET and Silverlight development and deployment skills
  • Partners who provide controls and components to add to applications
  • Partners who provide entire applications that can be rebranded
  • Hosting partners skilled in deploying applications on the Web for scalability
  • Content delivery partners with global networks for delivering media content Worldwide

CREATE RICH WEB APPLICATIONS THAT NATURALLY INTEGRATE WITH YOUR EXISTING BACK-END SYSTEMS. EASILY ENHANCE EXISTING WEB SITES AND SHAREPOINT SITES BY INCREMENTALLY ADDING SILVERLIGHT COMPONENTS.

Silverlight relies on the market leading Visual Studio development environment and is built on the industry proven .NET framework.

Development with .NET and Visual Studio integrates Silverlight with a broader range of Server products from Microsoft. This makes integration simple with servers already running business functions including SharePoint Server, SQL Server, Windows Server, Microsoft Dynamics, and BizTalk Server.

Components are available to rapidly add Silverlight’s interactive functionality to a variety of web platforms including SharePoint sites, ASP.NET sites and simple XHTML sites. This means businesses can enhance the interactivity of their sites piece by piece without the need for a risky ‘big bang’.

RAPIDLY CROSS-TRAIN WEB DEVELOPERS ALREADY FAMILIAR WITH ONE OF THE MANY LANGUAGES SUPPORTED BY SILVERLIGHT.

Silverlight is an inclusive developer platform for both .NET developers and those already using Web languages such s Javascript, Python, XHTML and Ruby. With Silverlight, Web developers can continue to use their favourite languages while taking advantage of the advanced interactivity of Silverlight and the industrial strength underpinnings of the .NET framework.

Silverlight can be quickly and cost effectively adopted by business as their developers already working in businesses can quickly start working with Silverlight with little or no additional training

REDUCE TIME TO MARKET AND IMPROVE TEAM PRODUCTIVITY THROUGH THE ADVANCED DESIGNER-DEVELOPER WORKFLOW BETWEEN EXPRESSION STUDIO AND VISUAL STUDIO.

A major obstacle to delivering rich application experiences to the Web is the disconnect between Designers and Developers, both of whom are fundamental in the process. This happens because their toolsets force them into a ‘silo’ mentality with the only point of contact being a one-time hand-over of a graphical representation of the user interface to the developers. This causes several issues:

  • Developers have to re-interpret the graphical design using the tools and technologies they use to implement the user interface. The end result is a developers’ interpretation of a designers’ intent which hardly ever matches the original vision.
  • Designers see the Developers’ implementation and don’t like it so have to find a way to feedback changes to the developer, usually pen & paper. This cycle continues, consumes large amounts of energy and creates tension between Designer and Developer.
  • The final result end up being delivered late and is a poor reflection of the original design.

Designer and Developer tools for Silverlight overcome these problems by using XAML as a common language to describe user interfaces and for Developers and Designers to collaborate. Designers create user interfaces in Expression Blend and Developers then open the exact same project files and start coding to the user interface. Designers can then review how their design is being implemented and make changes to the design as they realise interaction flows with the Developer.

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This break-through in Designer Developer collaboration means that creating interactive application experiences is a truly collaborative effort delivering exceptional interfaces in a reduced time to market.