Microsoft Shows Silverlight 3

From PC World: Seeking an edge in the crowded rich Internet application technology space, Microsoft is officially launching on Friday its Silverlight 3 platform, featuring offline capabilities for running applications outside of a browser and improvements in areas like 3D.

The company also will launch its Expression 3 technology for application design. Microsoft said that in conjunction with Microsoft's Visual Studio software development platform, Silverlight and Expression offer a collaborative development and design environment. Silverlight and its accompanying software development kit actually were made available earlier this week.

Silverlight, though, must compete with the more established Adobe Flash platform as well as with Sun Microsystems' JavaFX technology. Complicating this field are HTML technologies that could eventually eliminate the need for plugins such as Silverlight, Flash, and JavaFX.

But Microsoft said adoption of Silverlight has accelerated, with more than one in three Internet devices having installed the earlier Silverlight 2 release since its release about nine months ago. Silverlight customers being announced on Friday including the MGM "SGU: Stargate Universe" and Continental Airlines, which plans to use Silverlight in a call center reservation system.

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