I have some questions about Microsoft Silverlight?

What is Silverlight all about? I perceive it as being Microsoft's offering to replace Adobe Flash?


How do you author a Silverlight applet? Is there a designer called "Silverlight" or do you just use C#, WPF, or ...?





Do you have to have IIS in order to serve Silverlight applets? For example, if I create a Flash (SWF) object, I can host that on whatever server I want -- as long as the client's browser has the Flash Plug-in installed, they will be able to run it. I don't want to have requirements that force me to use IIS or run mono on Linux.





Am I correct in my understanding that users of Windows, Mac and Linux can all view Silverlight content in their browsers (e.g. are there plug-ins or whatever available for all those platforms?) What about other devices like Android, iPad, etc?





Apple recently cried about "how terrible Adobe Flash is" on the Mac. Is the Silverlight plugin any better? If not, maybe its Apple's SDK that is the problem?|||Microsoft started out being an OS that would run an amazing variety of hardware configurations. That vision has been abandoned in favor of the race to make "wall gardens".





Consider Apple. You use their product with their software to visit their store to buy their music format - a walled garden. Microsoft thinks they can muscle in with the same store layout using alternate patents.





In the 1990s, computer-illiterate bureaucrats granted too many patents for the most general of ideas. That legal battle has begun and should be crystallized as to what technology is truly a technology.





I see Microsoft being squeezed out of the handsets / handheld market. Silverlight is only partially implemented on other browsers. For instance, .svg is a good idea about defining graphics using .xml, and advocated by the w3.org.





Microsoft choses not to comply.





Google will answer your other technical questions about Silverlight. Adobe has saturated the market for their products. Adobe, as boxed software, has no assets that any other technical company would want. Adobe made the Mac and LaserPrint work for Apple, and then Apple promptly drove away. Jobs is such a hounddog about Adobe is the reason about Flash plug-in.