Comparison Between Silverlight 1.0 and 2.0
Silverlight 1.0 is a cross-platforms and cross-browsers plugin to display
Web pages holding XAML code.
Silverlight 2.0 (formerly 1.1) is an interface to .NET. It also works with
most browsers, but it requires the .NET platform under Windows or compatible
under other OS. This enables it to use languages other than JavaScript. Actually
it has a virtual machine such as Java.
| Features |
Silverlight 1.0
|
Silverlight 2.0
|
| AJAX |
Yes
|
Yes
|
| Cross browsers |
Yes
|
Yes
|
| Cross platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux). |
Yes
|
Yes
|
| Integration into HTML |
Yes
|
Yes
|
| Using DOM |
Yes
|
Yes
|
| HTTP Functions |
Yes
|
Yes
|
| JavaScript language |
Yes
|
Yes
|
| C Sharp Language |
-
|
Yes
|
| Other .NET languages |
-
|
Yes
|
| 2D Graphic |
Yes
|
Yes
|
| JPG et PNG Images |
Yes
|
Yes
|
| High definition video |
Yes
|
Yes
|
| Audio/Video (VC-1, WMV, WMA, MP3) |
Yes
|
Yes
|
| ASP.NET Controls (as asp:xaml) |
Yes
|
Yes
|
| XAML Parser |
Yes
|
Yes
|
| Framework with collections and genericity |
-
|
Yes
|
| Improved security |
-
|
Yes
|
| Isolated backup |
-
|
Yes
|
| JSON Web services |
-
|
Yes
|
| LINQ |
-
|
Yes
|
| Read write XML on the server |
-
|
Yes
|
| Download size |
2 MB
|
4 MB
|
It is not said if the two solutions will coexist, or if the latter will have to replace the first. Version 1.0 is a subset of 2.0, which offers greater portability through the virtual machine and should replace the first version.
More details on Microsoft's site in the article Silverlight Overview.
Silverlight 1.1 has been renamed 2.0.