Silverlight BluePrint will add the power of Rich Internet Applications to the typically dry SharePoint world.
"As enterprises are looking at the consumerization of IT, the things they see outside the enterprise, they want in-house," Rob Curry, a director of SharePoint for Microsoft, said in an interview. "They still want the ability to manage and archive the content, but they want that rich user experience and this allows that to happen."
The sample code Microsoft is releasing later this week, Silverlight Blueprint for SharePoint, includes sample Web parts, which are like widgets for SharePoint sites. Those include a sample active directory look-up app, a picture viewer, and an app that could be used to view e-learning videos, as well as some controls. Microsoft anticipates companies might use Silverlight for other rich media needs such as business intelligence visualizations.
The Silverlight Blueprint will become available on Wednesday, when Microsoft may also announce the first beta version of Silverlight 2.0 at the company's MIX conference. Silverlight 2.0 includes a trimmed down version of the .Net Framework, so Microsoft anticipates developers should be able to create a wide variety of Web applications to run on Silverlight.