All right, I'm writing this post at 4 AM morning of IST and I'm just excited to inform that we just finished up installing SILVERLIGHT support on all our Windows Servers, something you won't find with any other web hosting provider in india except WIPL :)

So what is Microsoft Silverlight ?

Microsoft Silverlight is a cross-browser, cross-platform, and cross-device plug-in for delivering the next generation of .NET based media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web. It is the latest technology from Microsoft which would help designers to deliver cutting edge application.

By using Expression Studio and Visual Studio, designers and developers can collaborate more effectively using the skills they have today to light up the Web of tomorrow.

So What can Silverlight actually do for the developers ?

Well a lot, its an upcoming technology and hence you can expect a lot of development on the way, I'm jotting a few things which you can expect from SILVERLIGHT and that's not all

Vector art (essential anything Illustrator can create)

1. Page turning effects

2. Full screen video

3. Full screen mode

4. Alpha channels transparency

5. Animated anything (fades, motion, rotation, animation via code, etc..)

6. Custom cursors (with tooltip text or anything else you want)

7. Video can render on any "surface" or object. (a button for example).

8. Video can overlap other elements and be overlapped by other elements. (think "ink" rendered on top of the video, say like football plays rendered on top of the video.

9. You can jump to a specific position in the video playback by setting the Position to the number of fractional seconds since the beginning of the clip. In other words, I can tell the media element to jump directly to the frame nearest "12.34 seconds". The value can come from external lists, or from the Media's own list of Markers. This will not work with streamed media.

10. The Silverlight "stage" can be a fixed size or can grow/shrink with the browser.

11. With some code work, it's possible to have some elements on the stage grow/shrink with the browser while others stay the same size regardless of browser size.

12. Draw shapes, (lines, rectangles, etc.), images, text, and video

13. Apply animations and transforms to anything you draw (e.g, spin and zoom a video element)

14. Process input from mouse and keyboard

15. Read and write XML

16. Call out to external Web services to send or receive data (1.0 limited here; 1.1 will have a rich network stack)

I was able to include above from the Silverlight Blog, their's still lot more information which is available at the silverlight website, Developers can visit www.silverlight.net to find out more about it.

I guess this would make the developer community more happy, we at WIPL would continue delivering latest technology to all our web hosting customers in India and across the globe. Before logging off...I just wanted to share something else....their's a big announcement coming on your way tomorrow...not tomorrow...I mean today evening so check out our Blogs and you might love what we'll announce.

Adios and Good Night..I mean good morning :)