Microsoft Silverlight ??????????????????

Microsoft Silverlight installed itself on my laptop without my consent ( I think).

Do I need it?
What does it do (in non-geek language, please) ?
Howcome comodo firewall didn't pick it up? I assume MS just overrode Comodo.
Anything serious happen, if I delete it?

Your replies welcome.

The only reason I became aware of it, was that a popup appeared asking if I wanted to upgrade to a new version.

Bazza

NB: Do a search in C:\Program Files. You also might see it there.

Baz

 

Thanks Kestrel13! and plodr for your replies. It will be gone. :-D :major

Bazza

 

2644 entries in my Registry covering many languages that I never would have needed. It is a real pity that programmers don't ask if you want a single/or more default language/s

Bazza

 

"Microsoft Silverlight is an application framework for writing and running browser plug-ins or other rich internet applications, with features and purposes similar to those of Adobe Flash." More at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SilverLight

I haven't come across many websites that use it. During the last Winter Olympics, I watched some Olympic events on a website that used Silverlight for it's streaming video of the events. But, I don't recall seeing it on any websites I've visited since then.

Within the last 2 months, I've used CCleaner's registry cleaner and it found a lot of Silverlight entries; I removed all of them with no issues. I presume this is an unusual occurrence; I don't know why a large number of them appeared at this time.

 

Thanks usafveteran. I've removed Silverlight as per previous post.

I guess I will see an error/warning if it is ever needed to run a particular program as plodr advised in an earlier post.

Will wait and see if it is ever needed.

Bazza

 

I've used silverlight with netflix.