To install the Microsoft Silverlight browser plugin, you must have administrator access to your computer, and meet the following requirements. Windows Vista, 7, 8, 8.1 or 10; Mozilla Firefox 12 or higher OR Internet Explorer 7 or higher; Mac OSX. Mac OSX 10.5.7 or higher; Mozilla Firefox 12 or higher OR Safari 4 or higher.
Hey readers! Before heading forward with our tutorial on how to get Microsoft Silverlight on Mac, let us discuss what basically a Silverlight is, and what are its advantages. As we all know it is developed by Microsoft, and it works similarly to Adobe Flash as it allow users to run all the internet apps including video streaming, animations, multimedia and graphics.
- About Silverlight. Microsoft Silverlight is a free web-browser plug-in that enables interactive media experiences, rich business applications and immersive mobile apps. Silverlight works on all major OS's plus all major browsers, including Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari, and yes, Internet Explorer.
- Microsoft's Silverlight technology, launched at the NAB conference two weeks ago and pitched hard to developers at the Mix '07 conference this week, is being taken as a competitor to Adobe's Flash.
Though it has similar purposes and features as Adobe Flash but is not just a competitor, it is much more than that. This software gives users ability to listen audio, watching animations/videos on Google Chrome, Safari and Firefox. Still figuring out, how you can get this for your Mac Laptop? It is incredibly easy to download and install Silverlight on Mac PC.
How to Install it on MAC
Users just need to head forward to the official Microsoft Silverlight Page, where you will get to know that whether your Mac is installed with updated version of Silverlight or not, and if not then it will recommend you to install it. After you visit the site, you need to agree for the instructions for downloading it and automatically it will start installing on your MAC. When it is successfully downloaded, click the downloaded file and go through the process of its installation.
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Features of Microsoft Silverlight
IIS Smooth Streaming
It allows users to experience high-end definition video-audio streaming with a smooth playback.
PivotViewer
It helps the users easily in interacting with the data massively on Web which are entertaining, informative and powerful.
SketchFlow
With the help of this tool, users can easily and quickly prove the application’s vision as it helps in revolutionizing efficiency and speed.
Deep Zoom
This tool is the fastest as well as smoothest zooming technology which helps users in experiencing high-resolution frame rates and images.
Pixel Shader
It is a software based effects which includes drop as well as blur shadow which users can apply to any animated picture or graphical content.
New Controls
Microsoft loaded Silverlight with more than 60 customizable as well as high-quality and fully skinnable controls including new layout containers, charting and much more.
Media Format Extensibility
This feature helps in supporting the third-party codecs easily and even users can quickly decode the audio and video using this extensibility.
Perspective 3D Graphics
This software helps developers as well as users to apply 3D plane to the content. Furthermore, users can scale as well as rotate the live content without entering the extra code.
Silverlight works smoothly with Mac and other devices except Windows Phones and iPad but if you think that you can only use this app on PC then you have mistaken as this is also available for other OS as well. Though there are many tools which are not available for both iOS and Windows because of the rivalry between the two companies but still they allow users to download the suitable version according to their Mac model.
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Wrapping Up
It is one of those powerful tools developed by Microsoft which helps in creating interactive as well as engaging user experience about the apps on their devices and on Web. Silverlight is particularly a free plug-in which is powered by .NET framework. It is even compatible with all the browsers as well as OS’s and devices which helps in bringing together the interactive base to a new level at the place where Web works.
Do you want to ask any other questions about Silverlight? Have you tried to get Silverlight on Mac? Faced any troubles? If yes, do leave your comments below.
- Silverlight Tutorial
- Silverlight Useful Resources
- Selected Reading
Welcome to Silverlight tutorials. Silverlight is a platform for building rich internet applications. This tutorial will explain the concepts behind Silverlight, and will show you how to build it into your web applications. After completing it, you will have a better understanding of Silverlight applications using XAML and C#.
What is Silverlight
Silverlight is a browser plug-in, designed for building rich internet applications; applications that run in the browser like normal web applications, but which try to advance the user interface beyond where HTML can go. For example,
Silverlight is a framework for building rich, browser-hosted applications that run on a variety of operating systems.
It can also co-exist with HTML. Therefore, Silverlight can enhance an existing web application.
Silverlight works its magic through a browser plug-in. When you surf to a web page that includes Silverlight content, this browser plug-in runs, executes the code, and renders that content in a specifically designated region of the page.
The important part is that the Silverlight plug-in provides a richer environment than the traditional blend of HTML and JavaScript that powers ordinary web pages.
You can create Silverlight pages that play video, have hardware accelerated 3D graphics, and use vector animations.
Microsoft Silverlight For Mac What Is It Better
From a developer's perspective, the most interesting feature of Silverlight is that it brings the .NET Framework programming model to the client side of your web applications.
Silverlight is designed to run inside the web pages, so it can run as a browser plugin. It provides graphical services for rendering bitmaps, vector graphics, highdefinition video, and animations.
You can write in C#, or Visual Basic .NET, and use the .NET Framework class library features on the code that runs in the web browser.
Silverlight user interfaces, themselves use a very similar model to Windows Presentation Foundation(WPF), which is the user interface framework in the full desktop .NET Framework.
If you know WPF, Silverlight is easy to learn. Silverlight is a much smaller download than .NET. It is roughly a tenth of the size, so only a subset of the class library is present, and various implications have been made to WPF's model.
Despite the reduced scale, experienced .NET developers will feel instantly at home in Silverlight.
Platforms and Browsers
The platforms and browsers supported by Silverlight are −
Windows
Silverlight supports Windows, as you would expect of a Microsoft product. It requires Windows XP Service Pack 2 at least or recent versions of Windows.
The older versions are not fully supported. For example, Silverlight will not run at all on Windows ME, and Windows 2000 has limited support.
As for the browsers, Silverlight supports Microsoft's own Internet Explorer, of course, and it supports Firefox, and Google Chrome version 4.
Broadly, Silverlight supports the common web browser plug-in API. It works in a wider range of browsers than the officially supported list.
Mac
Silverlight supports Mac OS10, although Silverlight version 2 or later only runs on Intel-based Macs.
On modern Macs, both Firefox and Safari are supported.
Linux
Microsoft Silverlight For Mac Download
Microsoft's own Silverlight plug-in does not run on Linux, but the Mono open source project has an offshoot called Moonlight, which is a Silverlight compatible plug-in that runs on Linux.
Moonlight runs in Firefox, and interestingly has always been able to run in Standalone mode.
One of the reasons the Mono project decided to build Moonlight in the first place is that they thought Silverlight would be a useful technology for building user interface widgets that run on the desktop.