What is Microsoft Silverlight?

[nappyaddict]

I am removing all the programmes I never use. Is this an important programme and what is it for?

It's Microsoft's competition to Adobe Flash. A few websites use it to provide video and/or animation on their web pages. I think the ITV website uses it for replaying old programmes but few other websites do. If you remove it and it turns out that you do need it you can easily download it again from Microsoft.

"It's Microsoft's competition to Adobe Flash"

Basically yes, and like Flash it can do a lot more than just play videos. So you could have very interactive games and applications running inside a browser.

It's never really caught on though and there's been rumblings about Microsoft pushing it out into the cold. Other than the ITV thing I'm hard pushed to think of anything that uses it, the Hard Rock cafe at one time had an "interactive" exhibit of some of the items in their collection, and that's digging right back.

As Snorbs says uninstall it and then if you ever do need it you'll be prompted to reinstall it by the site that uses it.

Ah I use ITV catch up. That must be why I have it. Thanks :)

ITV don't seem to use Silverlight any more, so you should be able to get rid of it. They switched to Flash a while ago.

Which is quite funny as I attended a conference once where Microsoft were trying to desperately flog Silverlight and ITV were, I think, the only external company they could find who would come and say nice things about it :) The Flash people must have been quite chuffed when they converted :)