Scott Hanselman says:
Wow, I didn’t see this coming. (That’s a lie, I totally saw it coming and have been saying it could, would and should happen for months) Silverlight 1.0 is officially released as of 9pm PST and surprise! It will formally support Linux (screenshots) as Moonlight via a partnership with Novell in the coming months.
Andy Plessner says:
Microsoft just released Silverlight 1.0, the cross-platform, cross-browser plug-in for streaming video, games and other multi-media content. The company has a number of content partners who will use Silverlight including Entertainment Tonight, HSN, World Wrestling Entertainment.
Entertainment Tonight launches today in Silverlight. (As reported on Beet.TV Major League Baseball launched in an earlier version of Silverlight in late July.)
Like Flash, Silverlight is a thin plug-in download… Thanks to everyone at Microsoft for such warm hospitality for the purple channel.
(Of course Andy- our pleasure!)
Computerworld noted:
[Microsoft] said it will work with Novell Inc. on the Linux version of Silverlight, to be called Moonlight.
Microsoft will build the video codecs for the Moonlight project and supply Novell with software to test and ensure Silverlight runs well on 32-bit and 64-bit PCs running Suse Linux, Red Hat and Ubuntu.
Infoworld quoted the WWE’s creative director as saying:
It’s the advantages from a development side that Silverlight offers us,” in terms of streaming video costs and displaying multiple video streams, he said.
“Flash certainly is a great tool, and we have some Flash product on our site, but I think overall as a company to partner with, Microsoft is going to be a great partner going forward,” Angert said. WWE plans to use Silverlight for wrestling videos and broadband content. Current systems will be kept in place without much change, Angert said.
And the News.com NewsBlog noted:
Another key part of Microsoft’s Silverlight strategy is to rely on its development tools. Its Visual Studio programming tools and Expression-branded designer products ease collaboration between developers and Web designers, Goldfarb said.
Version 1.1 of Silverlight, which Microsoft announced at its Mix 07 conference in May, will be available next year, probably in the summer, he said. That version will have support for the .Net programming model used in Microsoft’s development languages, including scripting languages.
With the Silverlight 1.0 release, Microsoft also intends to release Expression Encoder, a tool meant to make it easy to encode video for display on the Web with Silverlight.
Not a bad start.