Silverlight Interview Questions and Answers

Answer - 1 : - 1. Silverlight is a web based technology, launched by Microsoft in April 2007. Silverlight is considered as a competitor to Adobe's Flash. 2. Silverlight is Microsoft's implementation of a cross-browser, cross-platform client framework that allows designers and developers to deliver Rich Internet Applications (RIA) embedded in Web pages. 3. Silverlight is a browser plug-in approximately 6MB in size; it is client-side free software, with an easy and fast (less than 10 sec) one time installation available for any client side browser. 4. It supports advanced data integration, multithreading, HD video using IIS Smooth Streaming, and built-in content protection. Silverlight enables online and offline applications for a broad range of business and consumer scenarios. 5. One of the design goals of the Silverlight technology is to fill the gap between Windows applications and Web applications in terms of creating Graphical User Interfaces (GUI). 6. Silverlight applications are run as client-side applications without the need to refresh the browser to update the UI. However, because of the built-in .NET framework, Silverlight applications can easily integrate with server-side controls and services. Using Silverlight's implementation of the .NET framework, developers can easily integrate existing libraries and code into Silverlight applications.

Answer - 2 : - 1. Support for the .NET Framework – if you are already a .NET developer, it is easy to start programming on Silverlight. 2. Support for managed code – you can write programs in your favorite language which .NET CLR supports like C#, VB.NET, dynamic languages (IronPython, IronRuby). 3. Better development tools -Visual Studio 2010, Expression Blend. 4. Large community- More learning resources available compared to Flash. 5. Integration with Enterprise based technologies like WPF, LINQ etc… 6. Silverlight integrates the XAML declarative language with the .NET framework. 7. It is a cross-browser, cross-platform technology which provides a consistent user experience everywhere it runs. 8. The Silverlight plug-in installs in seconds, and leaves a very small footprint. 9. After you install the plug-in, users no longer need to install anything on their workstations to run Silverlight applications. The applications are available to them from whatever browser they are accessing. 10 It runs a client-side application that can read data and update the UI without interrupting the user by refreshing the whole page. 11. It can run asynchronous communications with the server, allowing the UI to continue to function while waiting for the server response. 12. It delivers rich video, audio, and graphics.

Answer - 3 : - • Mac OS • Windows Vista • Windows XP SP2 • Windows 2000 • Windows Server 2003 • Linux (Moonlight)

Answer - 4 : - • Microsoft - Internet Explorer 6, 7, 8 • Mozilla - Firefox 2 and 3 • Apple - Safari 3 and 4 • Google - Chrome

Answer - 5 : - The system requirements for Microsoft Silverlight and associated technologies are listed below. Windows • Operating System: Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP Service Pack 2 • Intel® Pentium® III 450MHz or faster processor (or equivalent) • 128MB of RAM Mac OS • Operating System: Apple Mac OS X 10.4.8 or above • Intel Core™ Duo 1.83GHz or faster processor • 128MB of RAM Linux • Moonlight

Answer - 6 : - Moonlight is an Open Source implementation of Silverlight, primarily for Linux and other Unix/X11 based Operating Systems. In September of 2007, Microsoft and Novell announced a technical collaboration that includes access to Microsoft's test suites for Silverlight and the distribution of a Media Pack for Linux users that will contain licensed media codecs for video and audio.

Answer - 7 : - • To run Silverlight applications on Linux. • To provide a Linux SDK to build Silverlight applications. • To reuse the Silverlight engine built for desktop applications.

Answer - 8 : - Yes, Microsoft has made the Silverlight browser plug-in freely available for all supported platforms and browsers.

Answer - 9 : - • Silverlight 1 is purely AJAX and JavaScript based. All the code has to be written in JavaScript and XAML. • Silverlight 2 supports managed code. When the Silverlight 2 runtime is installed, it installs a limited version of the .NET runtime on the client machine. This allows .NET programmers to write managed code to be executed on the client PC, and provides a better user experience to users. Of course, there is security restrictions built in to it so that the code has limited access to the client computer. • The biggest change is the implementation of the .NET Framework. If you are familiar with Silverlight 1.0, then you will be used to coding the application functionality in JavaScript. You can still implement functionality using JavaScript; however, you can now also implement functionality using C#, Visual Basic, Python, Ruby, and managed JavaScript. • Another major change is the introduction of the XAP package. In Silverlight 1.0, the XAML code was referenced directly by the Silverlight object embedded in the browser. In Silverlight 2, however, the embedded object references an XAP package that contains the XAP file, assemblies, and resources necessary to run the Silverlight application.

Answer - 10 : - • The Silverlight plug-in is a very lightweight component that is necessary for users to access Silverlight applications. The plug-in download and install takes only a few moments, and do not take up much hard drive space. • The Silverlight plug-in is responsible for accessing the Silverlight object in the Web page, downloading and accessing the XAP package, setting up the program environment, and beginning execution of the application. • When a Web page containing a Silverlight application is displayed, the user should be given a link to download the plug-in from Microsoft if the plug-in is not already installed.