Windows Hosting with Silverlight

For some time now, the Microsoft brand has been synonymous with information technology and more recently, formed close ties with the web hosting industry. Over the years, Windows hosting has made a name for itself with powerful features such as ASP, ASP.NET, FrontPage and MS SQL among several others. One of the most highly sought after features these days is a Microsoft technology known as Silverlight.
What is Silverlight?
Silverlight is a browser plugin that supports major web browsers such as Internet Explorer, FireFox, Safari and many others. As a cross-platform technology, it is not only compatible with Windows, but other operating systems such as Mac OS X, Linux and Unix. Silverlight is viewed as Microsoft’s alternative to Adobe’s Flash technology. This is because similar to Flash, it allows users to view media applications directly from their web browser in a streaming fashion that lets you listen to music and watch videos in near real-time. Perhaps the greatest advantage of Silverlight is its ability to be integrated with existing web applications thanks to a robust development framework that supports a number of programming languages. Whereas using Flash on the .NET Framework is messy at best, Silverlight was made for this powerful environment, giving it the ability to deliver unrivaled results.
Silverlight 3 Features and Benefits
Silverlight 3 was officially released on July 9, 2009. This version is bundled with many improvements and new features that enable developers to take the rich media experience to the next level.
Enhanced User Experience – The newest version of Silverlight comes included with new 3D graphics, text enhancement, font support and animation features, all of which provide developers and designers with a way to create next-generation web browsing experiences for the end-user.
Deep Linking Capability – Silverlight 3 offers support for deep linking, allowing for the bookmarking of pages within rich internet applications.
SEO-Friendly - With Silverlight 3, users can deal with a number of SEO-related tasks dues to its seamless compatibility with a number of different tools. By combining business objects on the server with site maps and ASP.NET controls, you can mirror the content of your applications into HTML format that can be indexed by the search engine bots, thus providing for better ranking in the SERPs.
Giving Silverlight a Test Drive
These features and benefits do not even scratch the surface because Silverlight has much more to offer. Hosting this amazing technology is incredibly easy since there are no significant requirements due to its cross-platform capabilities. However, there are some factors you want to keep in mind. Silverlight can be a resource hogging feature, particularly if your plans require a large entertainment or multimedia site. For this reason, you may want to consider hosting it on a virtual private server or dedicated server. If you want to give Silverlight a test run, you can try it out with Microsoft Silverlight Streaming. This is a free alternative that allows you to experience Silverlight for yourself before giving up your existing rich media technology.