Understanding Silverlight

Silverlight uses a familiar technique to go beyond the capabilities of standard web pages: a lightweight browser plug-in.

The advantage of the plug-in model is that the user needs to install just a single component to see content created by a range of different people and companies. Installing the plug-in requires a small download and forces the user to confirm the operation in at least one security dialog box. It takes a short but definite amount of time, and it’s an obvious inconvenience. However, once the plug-in is installed, the browser can process any content that uses the plug-in seamlessly, with no further prompting.