Microsoft Silverlight is a cross browser plugin that enables developers to build applications that deliver rich media experience on the Web. Though Silverlight is a Microsoft technology, you're not rectricted to MS Visual Studio to develop apps on it. You can use the Open Source Eclipse IDE for the job. A plugin called Eclipse4SL works with Eclipse to enable both Silverlight development and to provide better interoperability between Silverlight and existing Java websites and web services.

Working with Eclipse4SL
Before you install Eclipse4SL, a set of prerequisites have to be met. For integration with Eclipse, it requires Eclipse basic 3.4.1 or above. For Silverlight development, you need to have NET Framework 3.5 or above and Silverlight 2 SDK along with the Silverlight 2 Runtime. For Java support, JDK 1.5 update 11 or later will suffice.

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To install the plugin using Eclipse IDE's Update Manager, select Help> Software Updates and then select Available Updates tab and click on Add Site button. The Eclipse IDE provides almost similar features as Visual Studio for developing Silverlight apps. It provides the same project system and compiler for packaging Silverlight apps. Even the XAML editor has code hinting feature, drag and drop of tool palette, C# code generation and synchronization with the preview. To explore the features of the plugin, we tried importing an existing Silverlight project into Eclipse and run the project from within the IDE.