Microsoft releases Silverlight plugin beta

Yesterday, Microsoft unveiled the beta version of Silverlight, a platform for the creation of rich interactive applications (RIA), formerly known as WPF/E (Windows Presentation Foundation/Everywhere).

It’s easier to understand it as a Flash player alternative with, according to Microsoft, a number of advantages including higher video quality, support for multiple programming languages and searchable since XAML, its user interface definition language is text based so search engines can index it as well.

Some demos were released to showscase the release including one in partnership with 20th Century Fox that presents a high quality video player for trailers. So far it looks good but end users could hardly distinguish it from a Flash animation/video.

Another more notable example is a Netflix prototype for its forthcoming online movie rental service which just looks great.

The beta version of the Silverlight plugin is available for Internet Explorer, Safari and Firefox 1.5.x and 2.0.x on Windows and Mac OS X only. Linux support may come in the future. You can try the plugin, a 1 MB download (Windows version), here.