We are starting to see Microsoft push Silverlight out on more of it’s assets.  Microsoft.com home page (one of the most visited in the world) now shows the following to users without Silverlight installed

And the following once it is installed; an accordion type control highlighting current content on the site (By the way Microsoft, SkyDrive now offers 25GB of storage for free, not 5GB as stated on this page, at least my account does. CORRECTION – the site has just been updated as I wrote this to show 25GB of free space!)

Interestingly they have also added a more prominent Live Search at the top of the page.  Live Search is still struggling to get traction so perhaps this will help, though it does not go as far as some have suggested.

This is good for developers using or considering Silverlight in their solutions because it will drive usage up, and because Microsoft are actively pushing it rather than taking the “no-installation-experience” option I highlighted in my previous post that is shown on some other Microsoft sites.

It would be nice to summarise all the Microsoft sites that are using Silverlight, but I haven’t found an easy way to do this – if anyone has any ideas on how to get or find that information please let me know.

Cheers

Ian