Well I installed Silverlight lately, and I do not see any difference in IE which I rarely use. I would like your views and understanding upon SL If anyone can explain how it actually changes yoru browsing experience, please do so, thanks.
I've yet to run into a site that uses/requires it. And BTW- there is one for OSX- http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/development_tools/silverlight.html
It's just Microsoft's answer to Flash/Flex from Adobe and JavaFX from Sun, etc. The RIA or "Rich Internet Application" platform. Their demo site probably is the best place to see what they are trying to do. Google for "Silverlight Airlines" for one of their better examples. Remember back when RealAudio was the only reasonable way to get audio on the web ? Microsoft struck back by integrating their player into Windows. This is the same sort of thing to avoid ceding the web to Adobe/Flash.
Silverlight is MS's attempt to crowd in on the Rich Internet Application world. It's like a cutdown WPF running on top of .Net. The Apps I've seen done in Silverlight 2.0 look pretty cool.
Well I installed it on my firefox browser and the only thing that has changes is that pages like myspace load way more faster. However sometimes it makes forefox crash or produce some conflicts with the flash player. But I think that Silverlight only works to see Microsoft's page in a different way.
There should be new web pages built with silverlight for a different experience in IE, unfortunately there are less examples .More than 70% of websites are using Flash and flex .So they will remain as the ultimate source of rich media in internet until Microsoft finds a suitable method to market silverlight .
SL is a project to support rich media content. SL works for both 32 and 64 bits IE browsers. Adobe has not developed any software to support Adobe Rich Media Software at 64 bits browsers. If Microsoft SL becomes favorable rich media content for many websites, it would kill Adobe's popularity in competition of Web Developing Software.
At this time Silverlight is mostly used in controlled environments like intranet applications (inside a company) where the developer knows what people are using. You generally can't dictate random people on the internet to use silverlight and rather then giving then a bad experience if they don't have it I'd rather give them a bit poorer experience by not using it However companies that request custom web applications for them selves do appreciate rich interfaces sometimes. They will have no problems installing silverlight on their computers.
Ahh.. they also have a Silverlight feature to enhance viewing, the screen looks clearer and it works for me
The only bump silverlight ever got was from the Olympics where msnbc required its installation to view videos. Since then, one of the tech magazines has said downloads dropped dramatically and developers just aren't interested.
If you live in the UK, things like ITV's tv catchup service will require silverlight to watch video streams on, it'll force a lot of people into the position of downloading it. A few other UK sites are adopting it as their 'streaming video' too lof choice but always tend to have the 'view in alternative media' option available in a tiny little text box in the lower left hand corner