Chapter 1. The Silverlight Technology

Silverlight as a technology has come a long way. We now have Silverlight 5 close to being released or already released with the publication of this book. We see Silverlight as the technology choice for Windows Phone 7. We see it as being a core part of Windows 8. Silverlight has become the standard technology for corporate Line of Business (LOB) applications. Because it is a plug-in technology, you don't have to worry about how it will render on disparate browsers or if it will look the same in Mac and Windows.

In this chapter, we will take a look at what it means to develop Silverlight applications and ultimately dashboards. We will identify the advantages to using Silverlight as the platform of choice. We will cover the following topics: