Silverlight Roadmap Questions

Michael Schwarz on Monday, April 7, 2008

I came across a great post about updated Silverlight 2 roadmap [1].

Silverlight [2] is about 7 month old kid but it is already making such a big buzz. One of my colleague Rahul [3] did excellent job in terms of putting up a FAQ regarding the roadmap.

<li>When exactly will Silverlight support all the codecs that a standard Windows Media Player support? How about supporting .flv since most of the video on Internet currently is using this format?</li> <li>Which streaming server protocols does Silverlight support currently and which will be supported in near future?</li> <li>Why the support for displaying a .gif image is is missing? When it will be added?</li> <li>Is the size of Silverlight 2 Beta plug-in expected to increase by the time of final release? Which namespaces Microsoft is planning to add in final release.</li> <li>What would be the full and final set of controls that are expected to be included with Silverlight 2 - final release?</li> <li>When is Silverlight 2 - final version expected to be released? </li> <li>Is there going to be a big difference in terms of features/component model etc. in Silverlight 2 beta and final release (just like it is the case with 1.1 Alpha and 2.0 Beta)?</li> <li>Will Silverlight 2 final release offer some local Caching API (with automatic expiration, notifications etc.) just like System.Web.Cache API in ASP.Net 2.0/3.5?</li> <li>In order to call a WCF Service from Silverlight 2 Beta, you have to use &#8220;basicHttpBinding&#8221; currently. Will Silverlight support additional bindings in near future like MSMQBinding and others?</li> <li>Does Microsoft have any authentic estimates of Silverlight usage by the end users? Adobe claims 90% coverage of Flash, We know Silverlight is new but would like to know the current coverage, estimated coverage in next 1 year and Microsoft&#8217;s plans to increase its coverage, to move forward with our development efforts with even more confidence.</li> Read all answers at source [1].