Wednesday, July 9, 2008

Differences between WPF and Silverlight

Nowadays, two terms are mostly heard in Windows Graphics sphere, WPF and Silverlight. Many of us presume they are one and the same thing. But actually there are fundamental differences between the two. In this post, I'm posting the basic differences between the two (primarily Silverlight 1.x)
WPFSilverlight 1.x
WPF is the complete graphics framework written from the scratch by MicrosoftSilverlight is subset of WPF in the sense that it contains only windows independent class libraries of WPF
WPF applications are not Web enabled. They are mostly focused around Windows FormsSilverlight has been introduced for the sole purpose of enabling Web support for WPF applications
WPF applications are supported by only Windows based computersSilverlight provides support for different browsers like Firefox and Safari
WPF applications whole heartily support and use C#Silverlight applications use XAML and Javascript to define their markup and behaviour. C# code is not supported
WPF requires .NET runtimeSilverlight doesn't require .NET runtime to render its graphics
WPF uses Windows media player on the client to play any mediaSilverlight uses OS media support to play media
WPF has capability to create 3D graphicsSilverlight is limited to 2D graphics only

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Nice comparison. Very insightful