While upgrades to Internet Explorer 7 were long expected to be delivered via Microsoft's automatic update (and currently are), today's release of numerous 'Tuesday patches and updates' held yet another surprise delivery from Redmond.
Along with a group of numerous 'critical and not-so-critical' updates today, Silverlight, (or, as some view it, Microsoft's rich media alternative to Macromedia's Flash) arrived today in the automatic update 'custom' folder.
Silverlight 1.0 is currently available for Windows Vista, Windows XP SP2 and Windows Server 2003 and is also compatible with most (but not all) Mac OS 10.4.8+ computers.
The big question? The browser that has been building market share (approximately 16% currently in the enterprise at present, even high in other sectors) ....
YES, Silverlight IS Firefox compatible.
Quick Test drive: (Note - We DO NOT recommend this on any mission critical computer or network!) ... Our 'beta box' that has been testing Windows XP Release Candidate SP3 and a variety of other Microsoft and Mozilla Beta products is (so far?) stable tonight with Silverlight onboard, right along side Flash.
In any event, if you keep auto updates turned off for resource savings, or because you don't like 'web-aware' applications, be sure to check today's updates from Microsoft and see which you need or wish to apply.
The Silverlight website at Microsoft can be found here.