What is microsoft silverlight?

[tizerist]

windows update wants me to install this. but what is it?

don't really want to use drive space on "pretty" applications, only useful ones.
thats why i have ignored the Texas holdem game and windows dreamscene...

 

[raybay]

This works well... a definite improvement for most users, but it is merely at your option... and you can remove it if it does nothing for you.
You can find a great deal of information about it at the www.microsoft.com site.

 

[tizerist]

THANKS.

i just youtubed it. it doesnt seem like anything really essential right now. i'll leave it to avoid having extra folders, but maybe later

 

[Bluemouse]

It's a terrible microsoft "replacement" for flash. You don't need it for their pages but they ask you to install it anyways

 

[raybay]

Why do you think it is "terrible"?
The Adobe version as bloated way beyond recognition since they bought out Macromedia. It uses huge amounts of space, and does nothing more or better than Silverlight.
One good it may do is produce some competition for Adobe, which has almost ruined a pretty good Flash product.

 

[billyellis]

I gave up and downloaded Silverlight to watch streaming Olympics coverage. It seems to work OK, but I have a few questions if someone has a moment.

1. What does it run as? It is supposedly a browser add-on, but it is not listed in my FF add-ons list, so how would I disable it if I wanted to?? No services show up in the Task Manager Processes or in the Services application either, so where the heck is it running? (I would also add that FF has been very, very slow since around the same time as installing Silverlight. Maybe a coincidence, maybe not. One of the reasons I want to be able to know when it is running is to determine whether it may be running when I am not using it and slowing down the browser unnecessarily.)

Which leads me to

2. I use FF, but I notice that files show up in the temprary IE folders when using Silverlight. Is it running any components of IE and are there security implications as a result?

Thanks for any insight you can offer. I think I will probably uninstall after the Games are finished, but knowing MS there will be plenty of dingleberries left behind on my hard drive...

 

[billyellis]

Update: I uninstalled but FF seems permanently slowed somehow.

Does anyone know whether there are .dll's that MS installs but leaves behind after uninstall that might be causing this? There is some buffer that now is not being cleared. If I open a bunch of tabs but later close all but one, and then Ctrl-Shift-Del to clear all saved info, the Memory Usage (Task Manager) never goes much lower, and steadily increases during usage until at about 600-700Mb I need to close FF and reopen because it is working so slowly, using 50% of the CPU and hanging for long periods after every action.

This started when I installed Silverlight, and removing that MS pestilence did not return FF to its previous level of function. I'm guessing this was a deliberate "flaw" inserted by MS to drive people away from FF. I'm hoping someone out there with more know-how than me can point me to a few key files to delete/unregister or something?

I don't really want to uninstall and reinstall FF, but I will if I have to. But the only way I can imagine that working is to delete everything in the process, which means all my profile settings, preferences, etc, which would suck.

browser.cache.memory.enable is set to true, and there are several other settings dealing with cache/memory, but I

(a) don't know enough about them to feel completely comfortable changing them, and

(b) I don't know what they were set to before, so it is hard to tell whether the Silverlight install changed any of them.

Did anyone make a note of their browser settings before installing and after to see if the install was changing settings?

 

[fw2004]

I hope that you have already solved your problem with Firefox and Silverlight, but in case you haven't, or someone else has the same problem, here is my experience.

As I recall, I also installed Silverlight to view Olympic coverage. I am also running Firefox 3.0, and found that installing SL caused problems with FF.
I was able to uninstall it, but I never stop at install / remove programs.

I use a nice little utility called Resplendant Registrar.
Using RR to search for "silverlight" I found many entries left behind by the uninstall.
I removed all of them from the registry, and didn't have the trouble with FF.

You can use Regedt32 if you don't want to purchase Resplendant Registrar, but that is a much slower method.
I don't want to start sounding like an ad, so I'll leave it up to you.

I also believe that MS does things to discourage the use of Firefox and other browsers, but of course no one will ever prove this.

FW

 

[Tedster]

A web ad enhancer - similar to flash. Pretty much useless.

 

[gbhall]

As to why nothing seems to be running, it is like flash, you dont see that anywhere either - it is run under the control of the browser.

 

[Bobbye]

Everything you could possibly want to know about Silberlight: using the word Silverlight in a Google search finds 8,600,000 hits. Here's the first page: http://tinyurl.com/52djwe

The Official Microsoft Silverlight Site: http://silverlight.net/

Silverlight and Firefox: http://swik.net/Silverlight+Firefox

 

[magichater]

It's a terrible microsoft "replacement" for flash. You don't need it for their pages but they ask you to install it anyways

Second that its really bad have a few friend who are designers and the poor folk have no option but to use it

Another "Nice" application written by microsoft

 

[billyellis]

I use a nice little utility called Resplendant Registrar.
Using RR to search for "silverlight" I found many entries left behind by the uninstall.
I removed all of them from the registry, and didn't have the trouble with FF.

You can use Regedt32 if you don't want to purchase Resplendant Registrar, but that is a much slower method.
I don't want to start sounding like an ad, so I'll leave it up to you.

I also believe that MS does things to discourage the use of Firefox and other browsers, but of course no one will ever prove this.

Thanks for the suggestion, fw2004. I ended up finally giving up on FF 2.0.0.17, which I had been holding on to because of extensions not updated for 3.0. After completely uninstalling FF and deleting all app data folders, then installing 3.0, I have had not problems. So the uninstall was definitely not clean (thanks MS :evil, and that registry program probably would have helped. Now I know better than to ever install Silverlight again.

And I'm not sure how helpful it is, Bobbye, to post months after a question is asked and condescendingly tell people to Google a problem. When a question is posted, I assume one of two things: either a web search at the time of the question did not return any help on a new issue, or there were so many useless returns that it was not worth sorting through 8.6 million hits to find something related to the problem. At the time a question is asked, it is usually the former. Posting what you did months later is like telling someone two months after a car accident that they shouldn't have driven their car the day of the accident two months ago. At the time the question was asked, Silverlight was new on the scene. There were not 8.6 million hits back then because people had just started discussing it on forums and boards, and there were no clear answers available yet. After months of discussions on the internet, there are now a lot of hits, but what good did that do anyone back then? So your mean-spirited post is not helpful to anyone.

 

[Bobbye]

08-10-2008 billyellis
1. What does it run as? 2. I use FF, Thanks for any insight you can offer.

You are the one who brought this thread out of a 6 month retirement. You are the one I directed my insightful answers to. Apparently you didn't do the Google search, or you wouldn't have asked the question. I notice you have been displeased with replies from others on other threads. I will refrain from replying to your questions since it appears you don't find the replies useful.

 

[billyellis]

When people ask a question, it is because they are looking for an answer. No one is hoping that someone who has no interest in providing a helpful answer will post a sarcastic suggestion to check Google. If Google had the answers to all of life's problems, we wouldn't need TS, would we? As I stated in my post, there are two possibilities for search engine results on very specific questions. Either they are few and unhelpful, or they are in the millions (as in your post) when the search terms are commonly used in many contexts, in which case it is virtually impossible to find your keywords in the right context such that you are assisted with your problem.

Your logic that since you get a lot of search engine hits today so therefore I was lazy and did not run a search in August is so flawed that it is not worth debating further. I welcome any constructive responses to any questions I might ask. But if all you are going to do is insult me by implying laziness based on flawed logic, then I would indeed appreciate it if you did refrain from responding. If you were truly trying to be helpful, then I thank you for your assistance.