Microsoft Silverlight 2.0 Release

Ladies and Gentlemen!

They waited.
Our colleagues from Redmond report good news for developers of RIA applications on .NET - Silverlight 2.0 is released on October 14. An official document can be read here .

For those who are interested in the capabilities of the technology, I will provide a designated list of the main features.

So:

• Support for a rich set of .NET base classes. Silverlight is a subset of the “regular”, complete .NET Framework of the latest version.
• Powerful and functional built-in controls. This includes DataGrid, ListBox, Slider, ScrollViewer, calendar controls, and more.
• Advanced support for skins and templates. This gives flexibility to customize the appearance of the application and its individual elements.
• DeepZoom Technology. This technology allows you to create "multi-layer" images using ultra-high resolution images.
• Powerful and diverse support for network communications protocols. Right out of the box, we get full support for REST, WS * / SOAP, POX, RSS and standard HTTP services (for those who don’t know, WCF really “can do anything”), which allows developers to create applications that are easily integrated with existing back-end systems using heterogeneous formats.
• Expanded support for .NET Framework languages. Unlike other runtimes, Silverlight 2 supports a whole bunch of programming languages ​​supported by CLR (Visual Basic, C #) and DLR (JavaScript, IronPython, IronRuby), which allows developers to use existing knowledge and skills to work with these languages ​​on other platforms .
• Advanced content protection system. This includes Silverlight DRM, using PlayReady access control technology, which protects content used in applications.
• Improved server scaling and advertiser support. This includes streaming capabilities, download capabilities, advanced search optimization techniques, and support for ad technologies in streaming content.
• Wide ecosystem of partners. A network of partner companies such as ComponentOne, Infragistics and Telerik Inc. Already offer a lot of products that will bring the development of Silverlight-applications in Visual Studio to an even higher level.
• Cross-platform and cross-browser. This means supporting Mac, Windows, and Linux as the OS, as well as Firefox, Safari, and IE as browsers.

Download Silverlight 2.0 here .

PS By the way, the Open-Source tool for SL development was also announced - the Soyatec project