Top 10 Silverlight Myths and the Facts to Bust Them

Silverlight is a client side plug-in based technology that has been in production since late 2007. I've been a web developer for well over a decade now, and recently have focused almost exclusively on Silverlight since version 3.0 was released. It astounds me how many people still resist Silverlight because they either don't understand what it is or haven't taken the time to research the capabilities it provides. Silverlight is a strong, mature technology that is being used on production sites to deliver powerful applications right here, right now. It's not emerging and it's not experimental.

From my experience answering questions about Silverlight on both Twitter and various forums and discussion groups, I've come up with ten common myths that I hear of over and over again. My hope is this one post can serve as a central place to address those myths, provide the facts that bust the myths, and help potential Silverlight users and developers better understand and take advantage of what I consider to be amazing technology. Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments at the end of this post and share this link with anyone who will gain value learning about the truth!

Myth: "Silverlight is mainly for video."

Fact: Video is only the tip of the iceberg.

Silverlight is a cross-browser, cross-platform, and cross-device plug-in used for creating rich applications on the Internet. In addition to a powerful video stack that makes it easy to deliver video using most of the widely available codecs, Silverlight also boasts a powerful client networking stack (making it easy to connect to third-party services like Facebook and Twitter, using SOAP, REST, or even raw TCP sockets). It has a robust data access model that uses a concept known as data-binding to render data. This makes it ideal for line of business applications due to the relative ease of taking business classes and exposing the data through a rich, interactive user experience. Silverlight also boasts a very robust layout and styling engine and comes with literally hundreds of controls and behaviors ready to be integrated into your applications.

To see what's possible with Silverlight, take a look at the Silverlight Showcase. For an example of how Silverlight provides an effective "line of business" experience, check out Microsoft's Health CUI Patient Journey Demonstrator.

Myth: "Silverlight requires Microsoft web servers to run."

Read more: C#er: IMage

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