Wednesday, December 03 2008 @ 03:56 PM EST Contributed by: sde
Moonlight, which is being developed under the auspices of the Novell-led Mono project, was made available for download on Tuesday.
It was first demonstrated in the middle of 2007, shortly after Microsoft announced Silverlight as its answer to Adobe's ubiquitous Flash runtime. Flash content already runs on Linux computers, but, until Tuesday's announcement of Moonlight 1.0 Beta 1, there was no similar alternative for Silverlight content.
Mono project leader Miguel de Icaza wrote in a blog post on Tuesday that Moonlight 1.0, which tracks the Silverlight 1.0 application programming interface (API), supports the Microsoft Media Pack codec. Distributions of Moonlight do not, however, include that media codec or any others. That means a user will be prompted to download the Microsoft Media Pack the first time they try viewing Silverlight content using the Moonlight plug-in.
