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Microsoft Silverlight is a plug-in designed to enhance your video streaming capabilities and improve your overall viewing experience. It generally works in the background, but you can adjust your preferences and other settings from the app's dashboard.
Configuration options: You can determine Silverlight's behavior in a number of situations by making selections in the app's control panel. For instance, you may choose how and when to update the program, configure your webcam and microphone, and set permissions for certain websites.
Improved video quality: This plug-in does improve the quality of streaming video on your computer. Most of the time you won't even know it's there, as it just integrates into your browser and other video programs to get results.
Occasional crashes: Even when you're not streaming video, Silverlight can cause your browser to crash. We encountered this problem several times after installing the software, and we were presented with a message stating that Silverlight had encountered a problem. Generally closing the browser and reopening it solved the problem.
Microsoft Silverlight is a useful program, and certain other services, like Netflix, require it in order to play streaming video. It's not without issues, but it's free, and the improvements in video performance and other capabilities make it worth checking out.
Microsoft Silverlight is a cross-platform, cross-browser, and cross-device plug-in for delivering the next generation of media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web. Now with new mobile device focused implementations of Silverlight, developers and designers can easily take existing code, assets, skills, and tools and deliver superior user experiences on mobile devices. With initial support for Windows Mobile and Nokia S60 (including any S60 based handset) mobile operating systems Silverlight provides broad reach into the mobile space.
Microsoft Silverlight is in the Other Browser Add-ons & Plug-ins category of the Browsers section.