Imagine being able to book tickets online simply by connecting destinations on an online map, and being able to view a seamless virtual tour of the destination hotel or city before you make a choice! Or an online video jukebox that plays multiple video streams in parallel and allows users to seamlessly shift between videos! This and much more is exactly what will be enabled by Silverlight 1.0, a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in that delivers powerful media experiences through the Web. Microsoft announced the India availability of Silverlight 1.0 as part of its strategy to deliver great User Experiences across the Web, PC and mobile devices.

With this, businesses in India can offer Web applications that are far richer and more interactive than ever before, an assurance of a seamless and high quality end-user experience and a significantly lower cost of delivery. It integrates with existing Web technologies and assets and offers consistent experiences to Windows and Macintosh users on a variety of browsers including Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari. Silverlight is available to end users for free download from the Web.

Speaking on the occasion Tarun Gulati, General Manager, Developer and Platform Evangelism, Microsoft India said, "Many companies in India and across the world today are using path breaking customer experience as a competitive advantage for their businesses, and we believe that Microsoft's products such as Silverlight, Expression, WPF will allow companies to take this to the next level in an easy, cost effective manner. We have seen a lot of excitement among consumers when they see interface with solutions developed on these technologies. I believe that businesses can use this to create strong differentiators and customer loyalty. This is particularly important because Companies in India are beginning to increasingly adopt online models of business, often in addition to existing offline ones, and are using the Web as a tool to drive better and cost effective ways to increase customer interactions.

With India 's internet user base set to increase to 54 ml by March 2008, led by a huge surge in internet consumption in smaller cities and towns, there is huge opportunity for Companies to penetrate the market far more effectively than ever before. 'Today, the challenge for Web developers and designers is the fragmented tool and technology framework available to deliver experiences across multiple touchpoints i.e., Web, PC and Mobile . This leads to a compromise in the User Experience. With Expression Studio and Visual Studio, they can now collaborate seamlessly to deliver uncompromised experiences on Silverlight, while leveraging their existing. NET skills.' said Parimal Deshpande, Senior Product Manager, Microsoft.

In just 60 days since its international release to Web, over 40 customers have delivered over 60 applications for Silverlight from 20+ countries around the world. In India , some early adaptors such as Sify.com and Rediff.com , realizing the value of these technologies have plans to deliver Silverlight-based experiences for their viewers and customers.

Explaining their plans, Mr Bhaskar Saiapparaju, CTO, Sify, said, 'We are looking at ways to redefine User Experience for our consumers by introducing rich interactive elements, vector graphics, animation and High Definition TV experiences, and with the advent of rich internet application platforms such as Microsoft's Silverlight we will be able to do it effectively.' Speaking on the subject of the latest designer tool stack from Microsoft and its ability to enable rapid collaboration between designers and developers of Rich Iinternet Applications he added, 'This has been a key requirement for dev-dynamic content portals. With quick turnaround, Microsoft Silverlight has the potential that cannot be ignored when evaluating Next Gen User Experience platforms for SifyMax.'

Manish Agarwal, VP Marketing of Rediff.com , India 's leading portal added, 'Our challenge has been to provide a navigable experience for over 43 million users to browse more than 2 million books from 4000 authors. We believe that with Microsoft Silverlight and vector based graphics and animation we will redefine the experience at Rediff books, in terms of offering an expansive view of the massive collection, while being able to navigate through it with great ease.'

Other customers in India who have also piloted projects on Silverlight are the Indian Cricket League and sulekha.com.

In addition to Silverlight 1.0, Microsoft has also recently launched for the first time, a complete product suite -Expression Studio - for the designer community, focused on enabling better collaboration between designers and developers. Together with Visual Studio 08, Expression Studio and Silverlight will allow easy and seamless creation of compelling and rich user experiences, and in turn accelerate this trend across mobile, PC and Web. With its portfolio of application platform technology capabilities and products, Microsoft is both a longtime leader in development tools and a pioneer in enhancing user experiences on the Web and desktop. Microsoft is working with Novell Inc to deliver Silverlight support for Linux, called Moonlight.