Silverlight wields new web experience

BANGALORE, INDIA: Microsoft recently partnered with IPLT20 to offer live cricket matches to viewers through IPL website. With the help of the Silverlight platform, Microsoft's cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering next generation rich interactive applications on the web, viewers enjoyed the entire interactive video-experience through available web-browsers in the market.

In a recent interaction with Abhigna N G of CIOL, Arunjeet Singh, a consultant with Microsoft Global Services India talked about the development of compelling user interfaces for client applications which included applications delivered via the web (Silverlight) and those delivered as rich clients (WPF).

He also talked about the future of Silverlight applications and usage of Silverlight in mobile application. Excerpts:

CIOL: What made Microsoft to partner with IPLT20 to offer Silverlight during IPL?

Arunjeet Singh: While I wasn’t directly involved in that initiative, I do realize that with Silverlight, we have a cross-browser, cross-platform version of the Microsoft .NET framework optimized for Rich Internet Applications (RIAs).

As the chosen technology partner, we wanted to let everyone on the action. Not only can fans of IPL watch the action anywhere they are, but with rich features like a Deep Zoom enabled image gallery and a highlights viewer which lets fans filter highlights by teams, players or dates, the experience is so much more than just TV on the web using Adaptive streaming.

IPLT20.com was also another chance for us (Silverlight was also used by NBC Olympics last year) to demonstrate the power and reach of the Silverlight platform and its readiness to deliver rich experiences to a large set of users.

CIOL: You mentioned about Adaptive streaming in Silverlight to stream live cricket matches. What are the difference between Adaptive Streaming and other video sharing services?

AS: When you normally go to a video sharing/web casting web site, you are asked to choose a bit rate that fits your Internet connection. Options range from Dial-up (56kbps), to DSL (256kbps) to broadband (1Mbps) and beyond that for HDTV streams. Once the choice is made, you either end up with blurry video in a postage stamp sized window (if the chosen bit rate was quite low) or lots of buffering and breaks in the video (if the chosen bit rate was too high).

The problem is that the two variables (quality and bit rate) are interrelated and you are forced to make the choice at the start. Adaptive streaming solves this problem by dynamically modifying the bit rate of the stream depending upon what is available at any given time.

You can play a high quality stream, but if your bandwidth dips, the video continues to play smoothly, just with a lower bit rate. As a result, all you have to do is connect to the stream and start playing, no decisions need to be made. The system adjusts quality to always provide the smoothest, highest quality viewing experience.

CIOL: What are the video encoding formats are supported by Silverlight?

AS: Silverlight supports Windows Media Audio and Video 7, 8 and 9 (WMA, WMAPro, WMV and VC-1). Silverlight also has support for 1080p High-Definition video out of the box. In addition, the Expression Encoder makes converting video/audio to Silverlight-friendly formats a snap.

Finally, Silverlight 3 (due to be launched sometime this year) brings support for the H.264 (MPEG 4) codec and a raw A/V pipeline that allows developers the choice to write their own codecs. This, along with built-in GPU acceleration support, makes Silverlight the best platform to deliver video on the web.

CIOL: What are the new interactivity elements that Silverlight is offering in IPL website?

AS: I touched upon some of these in my first answer. In addition to providing an adaptive stream of live match videos, the live match video player also has advertising support. The advertisements are non-obtrusive and let viewers enjoy the live match action for free.

There’s also the great video gallery that lets viewers search for highlights (by team/player/date etc.) and relive the action from matches that happened earlier.

The Deep Zoom enabled image gallery has a huge collections from the match and off-the-field moments. The great thing about Deep Zoom is that it lets users browse all these images together and see them at the resolution they want without overly taxing limited Internet bandwidth.

CIOL: Does Silverlight web application work with all browsers and platforms and what are the main features and benefits of Silverlight?

AS: Silverlight supports (or will support) the following platforms:

a. Windows: Internet Explorer, Firefox
b. Mac OS X: Safari, Firefox
c. Linux: Firefox and Konquerer supported via Moonlight, a Silverlight compatible runtime
d. Windows Mobile: Support for Windows Mobile is currently under development
e. Symbian OS: Support for Symbian OS is currently under development. Symbian powers phones by Nokia among others

As you can see, the list is quite large and covers practically the whole gamut of browsers/platforms currently available.

Silverlight is a portable subset of the Microsoft .NET Framework and as such brings with it all the power and ease of use developers have come to expect from the .NET framework:

a. Data-driven controls such as DataGrid
b. Media Support: Video/Audio playing capabilities with a number of supported formats
c. Networking: Support for SOAP web services, REST-enabled services and TCP/UDP sockets
d. Browser Integration: A Silverlight application is a first-class citizen of the browser it is hosted in. Not only can the application interact with other elements in the browser (using JavaScript) but it also enables elements in the browser to interact with Silverlight applications
e. Isolated Storage: Lets Silverlight applications store data on the client’s machine thus allowing differentiated experiences per user and storage off application settings.

CIOL: How can a Linux developer work with Silverlight? Any plans from Microsoft to unveil any tool that bridges the gap?

AS: The Moonlight project is an open source implementation of Silverlight for Linux and other Unix/X11 based operating systems. Novell, in collaboration with Microsoft, is working on the runtime and already have a version out that supports Silverlight 2.

As part of the project, Novell has entered into a covenant with us that has given them access to the Silverlight specifications, internal test suites and audio/video codecs that we ship as part of Silverlight.

In addition, the team behind eclipse4SL project is hard at work trying to bring Silverlight development to the Eclipse IDE. The Eclipse IDE is the leading development tool on the Linux platform used by countless developers every day.

The project hit feature complete in December 2008 and the source code and binaries are available for download right now.

CIOL: Where do you see Silverlight in future? Is mobile and devices support on the roadmap?

AS: As I mentioned earlier, mobile support is definitely on the way. In fact, aside from Windows Mobile, we also have the intention of supporting the Symbian (Nokia Series 60) operating system.

The goal of Silverlight for the mobile is to provide a consistent experience across the desktop and mobile phones. What is even more interesting is that a developer who writes Silverlight applications for the desktop has to change nothing for the same application to work on a mobile phone.

The same application should just work across both platforms.

In general, Silverlight’s future is to get as close as possible to our desktop presentation framework (Windows Presentation Foundation or WPF) in terms of feature parity while at the same time maintaining the cross-platform and cross-browser support.

Having said that, Silverlight will always be a great way to deliver Rich Internet Application (RIA) experiences over the web to users everywhere and WPF will remain the best way to write desktop applications that take full advantage of the client hardware. In a larger sense, Silverlight is part of what we like to call the Client Continuum.

This continuum of technologies, including HTML, AJAX, ASP.NET, Silverlight and WPF, allows Microsoft .NET Framework developers to make use of all possible media to deliver the best client experience possible.