moonlight VS silverlight

Question

I am new in Silverlight....

Could someone please explain what are the basic differences between Silverlight and Moonlight ?

Answer 1

Main difference is the development environment. Moonlight provides means for developers to develop Silverlight (like) application in *inx environment using SharpDevelop. (removed the running environment from the answer).

Answer 2

This is actually quite simple:

• Microsoft develop the .NET framework and release it only for Windows
• Mono is an open source version of the .NET framework: in other words this is the framework .net for Windows and a lot of other OS, not develop by Microsoft. http://www.mono-project.com/Main_Page

You have the same kind of thing with Silverlight and Moonlight:

• Microsoft develop the Silverlight Framework for Windows and Mac OS
• Moonlight is an open source version of the Silverlight Framework, only working on linux, and not maintained anymore. http://www.mono-project.com/Moonlight

This is logic as Microsft themselves stop the development of Silverlight.

To have a better understanding of how you could have several framework to run the same source code, I recommand you to understand what is the CLR: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Language_Runtime

In a fabulous world, the same source code should behave exactly the same running with Mono or .Net (idem with Silverlight / Moonlight), as soon as your target is the same version of the framework.

Hope this is clear enough.