Microsoft has been working like gangbusters to create the perception that its cross-platform multimedia runtime Silverlight is a viable alternative to Adobe's Flash, and the vendor will soon put updated tools in the hands of Silverlight developers. In a Thursday blog post, Microsoft developer Ashish Thapliyal said Microsoft is "targeting late Summer" for its release of Silverlight 2.0, which is currently in its first beta release.
Silverlight 2.0 supports VC-1, WMV, MP3 and WMA content, but Microsoft has no plans to support the Flash video (.flv), used by Youtube and many other Websites, said Thapliyal. Microsoft's rationale here is to avoid paying licensing fees and to keep the Silverlight download file size as small as possible, he added.
"Silverlight isn't designed with an extensible codec model in mind, so there is no date/version announced for this," wrote Thapliyal. A second Silverlight 2.0 beta is due in May, and this version will be very similar to the final release, according to Thapliyal. He said no details are available about the roadmap for Silverlight for mobile, or Silverlight v.Next, also known as Silverlight 3.
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