XAML can be used for marking up the vector graphics and animations. In Silverlight applications, user interfaces are declared in Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML) and programmed using a subset of the. Silverlight provides a retained mode graphics system similar to Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), and integrates multimedia, graphics, animations, and interactivity into a single run-time environment. Silverlight was also used by Amazon Video and Netflix for their instant video streaming services, but Netflix said in its Tech Blog in 2013 that, since Microsoft had announced Silverlight's end-of-life, they would be moving to HTML5 video. Silverlight was used to provide video streaming for the NBC coverage of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, and the 2008 conventions for both major United States political parties. There is no Silverlight plugin available for Microsoft Edge. Silverlight is no longer supported in Google Chrome since September 2015, and in Firefox since March 2017. Microsoft has set the support end date for Silverlight 5 to be October 2021.

In 2013, Microsoft announced that they had ceased development of Silverlight except for patches and bugfixes. Microsoft announced the end of life of Silverlight 5 in 2012. Silverlight was also one of the two application development platforms for Windows Phone, but web pages that use Silverlight did not run on the Windows Phone or Windows Mobile versions of Internet Explorer, as there was no Silverlight plugin for Internet Explorer on those platforms. While early versions of Silverlight focused on streaming media, later versions supported multimedia, graphics, and animation and gave developers support for CLI languages and development tools. A plugin for Silverlight is still available for some browsers.

Photo src: Microsoft Silverlight (or simply Silverlight) is a deprecated application framework for writing and running rich Internet applications, similar to Adobe Flash.

Microsoft silverlight plugin edge