Simon Thorneycroft and Jonathan Hodgson

WPF/E renamed Microsoft Silverlight

Microsoft has announced the name of WPF/E as Silverlight, together with a new website.

"Microsoft Silverlight is a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of media experiences and rich interactive applications (RIAs) for the Web."

I'm still yet to be convinced by any of the demos that it is much more than Flash/Flex and it still leaves a grey area of UI choices between Html, DHtml (AJAX), SilverLight, Flash/Flex, WPF (xbap), WPF/Winforms.

If Microsoft 'merged' the full WPF xbap into Silverlight, so support for databinding, templates, text entry, grids, 3D, etc. was available cross-browser, cross-platform and it was seen as tool for rich client-side interactivity that would be a better story - as it is the video playback seems to be high priority than business data representation.

Maybe things become clearer over time, as point 10 from Tim Sneath's list is revealed and other content demo'ed at Mix07.

Nice little story around why the javascript file you need is aghost.js, because Ag is the cheminal name for Silver, so the product team could talk about WPF/E but leave the name in the CTPs.