Silverlight 1.0 is now available

Blogger: Richard Monson-Haefel

Microsoft announced today that that Silverlight 1.0 is now available as a general release. When you download the Windows plug-in it supports Microsoft IE 6, FireFox 1.2/2.0 but not the Safari browser, which is still in beta on Windows.  The Mac (version 10.4.8) plug-in supports FireFox 1.2/2.0 and Safari. Note: Silverlight 1.1 will not be supported on PowerPC Macs.

While the plug-in is in full release, the tools for building Silverlight presentations are still beta. Silverlight 1.1 which will be released sometime in the future includes a lot more features. In the mean time you can still do some interesting things with Silverlight as is demonstrated in a Windows Media video by Microsoft. Microsoft has even promised to work with Novell to create a Linux plug-in called Moonlight - that was a surprise since it recognition of the Linux Mono project.   

Micosoft has a long road ahead of them if they want to be competitive with Ajax and Adobe Flash.  The Flash plug-in is ubiquitous (96% of people browsing the Internet have it). Ajax is supported accross 93% of browsers.  It's going to get even more interesting as Sun Microsystems brings JavaFX Script into production.