Announcing Silverlight 5

Silverlight 5 adds significant new features and capabilities, and enables developers to create premium media experiences and deliver rich applications across browsers, desktops and devices. In my keynote this morning we demonstrated a number of them, and highlighted both the developer productivity Silverlight 5 provides and the great new user experiences it enables.  You can watch my keynote here.

A Silverlight 5 beta will be available in the first half of next year, and the final release will ship in the second half of 2011.

Some major features

• Hardware video decode: Silverlight 5 now supports GPU accelerated video decode, which significantly reduces CPU load for HD video.  Using Silverlight 5, even low powered Netbooks will be able to play back 1080p HD content
• Trickplay: Silverlight 5 now enables variable speed playback of media content on the client with automatic audio pitch correction. This is great for training videos where you want to speed up the trainer while still understanding what he’s saying
• Improved power awareness will prevent screensavers from kicking in while you’re watching movies while allowing the computer to sleep when video is not playing.
• Remote-control support is now built-into Silverlight 5 - allowing users to control media playback with remote control devices.

Full Story Here

Microsoft releases Silverlight for Symbian

The new release is for the S60 5th edition phones, including the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, Nokia N97 and Nokia N97 Mini, according to the Nokia Web site.  According to a blog post from the Silverlight for Symbian team, there are more than 20 million users of those model Nokia phones worldwide.

The newest Silverlight port will allow users to view Silverlight applications in their mobile browser, as well as to make use of related tools to build Silverlight applications that target the Nokia phones.

Microsoft made available as of July 5 the completed version of its Silverlight technology for Symbian via Nokia’s Ovi store.

Microsoft releases Alpha version of IIS streaming for Silverlight and Apple devices

IIS Transform Manager 1.0 (Alpha)

Runs encoding tasks to convert media files to on-demand Smooth Streams for Silverlight clients and Apple mobile digital devices.

IIS Transform Manager 1.0 (Alpha) provides an extensible media transform engine for IIS Media Services 4.0 that enables "watch folder" job submission, queuing, management, integrated media transcoding / transmuxing, and batch-encryption of on-demand audio and video files. It facilitates the execution of transform tasks after media arrives at a watch folder. Examples of such transforms include transcoding existing content in Windows Media or MP4 format, or transmuxing Smooth Streaming files encoded with H.264 (AVC) video and AAC-LC audio codecs into MPEG-2 Transport Stream (MPEG-2 TS) format for delivery to Apple devices.

Download details IIS Transform Manager

Final Release of Silverlight 4 Tools for Visual Studio 2010 is now available!

The WPF and Silverlight Designer Team is delighted to be able to tell you that the final release of Silverlight 4 Tools for Visual Studio 2010 is now available!

Silverlight 4 Tools for Visual Studio 2010 includes many essential features to help you work with your Silverlight 4 applications:

• Support for targeting Silverlight 4 in the Silverlight designer and project system
• RIA Services application templates and libraries to simplify access to your data services (check out this Silverlight.tv video and whitepaper giving full details)
• Support for Silverlight 4 elevated trust and out-of-browser applications
• Enhanced support for other new Silverlight 4 features, including:
  • Working with Implicit Styles
    • Go To Value Definition - navigate directly from controls on your page to styles that are applied to them.
    • Style Intellisense - easily modify styles you already have in XAML
  • Working with Data Source Window outputs
    • Data Source Selector - easily select and modify your data source information
    • Grid Row and Column context menu - Add, remove, and re-sort DSW outputs and other Grid layouts
    • Thickness Editor for editing Margins, Padding etc
• Sample Data Support -  see your item templates and bindings light up at design time
• Working with Silverlight 4 Out-of-Browser applications
  • Automatically launch and debug your OOB app from inside the IDE
  • Specify XAP signing for trusted OOB apps
  • Set the OOB window characteristics

Please Note: many of the new designer features work well with WPF as well as Silverlight projects, so this download is definitely recommended for Visual Studio 2010 WPF designer users too.

Check out this 20 minute Silverlight.tv video which shows most of the new Designer features in action.

Download and install the Silverlight 4 Tools for Visual Studio 2010
Follow the instructions at www.silverlight.net/getstarted  to install the final release version.

Don’t forget to uninstall any previous pre-release versions of the tools you might have.

We hope you enjoy this new release, and welcome your feedback via our MSDN forum.

Top Silverlight features

Silverlight is a powerful development platform for creating engaging, interactive user experiences for Web, desktop, and mobile applications when online or offline.

Here are a few top features of Silverlight :

IIS Smooth Streaming

IIS Smooth Streaming, an IIS7 Media Services 3.0 extension, enables adaptive streaming of live and on-demand media via standard HTTP protocols, and provides a high-quality viewing experience that scales on massive content-distribution networks, bringing a fantastic visual experience to any viewer regardless of their connection and computer capabilities.

• More About IIS Smooth Streaming
• See IIS Smooth Streaming Case Studies

Out of Browser

Silverlight offers a new set of features for building light-weight, sandboxed companion experiences for the Web that run on the desktop. Silverlight out of browser allows websites to build even closer, persistent relationships with customers. It enables the application to be placed in a restricted store on the user’s machine; and then provide a link directly to it from the user’s desktop or start menu. This is all enabled within Silverlight without any additional download of runtime or the need to write applications in a different way. An application can now be easily found on the user’s desktop or start menu, and launched with a single click. In addition, it can test if the network is connected, it can update itself, and can also have access to Isolated Storage. Taken together, these features represent a radical upgrade to the web experience.

• Launch Out of Browser Demo
• More About Out of Browser

SketchFlow

SketchFlow, part of Expression Studio, revolutionizes the speed and efficiency with which you can demonstrate a vision for an application. SketchFlow provides an informal and quick way to explore, iterate and prototype user interface scenarios allowing you to evolve your concepts from a series of rough ideas into a living breathing prototype that can be made as real as a particular client or project demands.

• More About SketchFlow

Deep Zoom

Silverlight Deep Zoom is the fastest, smoothest, zooming technology on the Web, bringing the highest resolution images and frame rates with the lowest load times to users. Deep Zoom also enables the display of thousands of items simultaneously, giving designers and developers new opportunities to create innovative navigation paradigms for both applications and the Web.

By optimizing the way images are stored and intelligently downloading only the pieces of information needed to fill the screen, Deep Zoom removes technical barriers and enables the delivery of engaging customer and content-centric experiences.

• More About Deep Zoom
• See Deep Zoom Case Studies

Pivot

Pivot makes it easier to interact with massive amounts of data on the web in ways that are powerful, informative, and fun. By visualizing thousands of related items at once, users can see trends and patterns that would be hidden when looking at one item at a time.

Because Pivot leverages Deep Zoom, it displays full, high-resolution content without long load times, while the animations and natural transitions provide context and prevent users from feeling overwhelmed by large quantities of information. This simple, inviting interaction model encourages exploration and longer audience engagement times, and applies broadly to a variety of content types.

• More About Pivot

New Controls

Silverlight is packed with over 60 high-quality, fully skinnable and customizable out-of-the-box controls such as charting and media, new layout containers such as dock and viewbox, and controls such as autocomplete, treeview and datagrid. The controls come with nine professional designed themes and the source code can be modified/recompiled or utilized as-is. Other additions include multiple selection in listbox controls, file save dialog making it easier to write files, and support for multiple page applications with navigation.

• More About New Controls
• See New Control Case Studies

Media Format Extensibility

With the new Raw AV pipeline, Silverlight can easily support a wide variety of third-party codecs. Audio and video can be decoded outside the runtime and rendered in Silverlight, extending format support beyond the native codecs.

• More About Media Format Extensibility

Media Format Extensibility

With the new Raw AV pipeline, Silverlight can easily support a wide variety of third-party codecs. Audio and video can be decoded outside the runtime and rendered in Silverlight, extending format support beyond the native codecs.

• More About Media Format Extensibility

Skinning and Styling

Silverlight makes it easy to create graphics and then use them to customize controls, such as the look of a scrollbar. Silverlight provides XAML based templates for each control that allow designers to reach inside the control and change the layout or look of each part of the control without rewriting any code. For example, a scrollbar is made up of a layout container and a set of parts such as the up and down button and draggable thumb. Parts can be rearranged and their appearance changed to fully customize the control. In addition, controls can be themed by applying a style. For instance you can offer a range of different colors or font sizes.

• More About Skinning and Styling

Download Microsoft Silverlight 4 Now!

The final release of Silverlight 4 has just been released by Microsoft and is available for free download. Silverlight is a powerful development platform for creating engaging, interactive user experiences for Web, desktop, and mobile applications when online or offline.

Silverlight Overview – Technical Whitepaper

Download Silverlight 4  (6 MB)

Microsoft to release Silverlight 4 on Thursday

Less than one year after launching Silverlight 3, Microsoft on Thursday will release the next version of its Adobe Flash competitor, Silverlight 4.

One of the big additions is the ability to run Silverlight applications out of the browser – on the desktop or a mobile device. That's key, because Microsoft is pushing Silverlight as the platform for developing apps for Windows Phone 7.

"Our goal with Silverlight is to enable it everywhere, not just on the desktop but also on mobile devices and also in the living room," Scott Guthrie, corporate vice president of the .NET Developer Platform, said during his keynote Tuesday at the DevConnections conference in Las Vegas.

That means Silverlight in Web browsers, on smart phones, on DVDs and Blu-Ray discs, and on television set-top boxes. Microsoft envisions cable boxes that use Silverlight to provide faster and smoother menus, and incorporate games.

"Integrating your set-top box with your friends' networks, Twitter or Xbox Live, is also key," said Larry Olson, a Microsoft program manager.

For media presentations, such as NBC's online Olympics site or CBS's March Madness webcasts, Microsoft has added support for multicast streaming and multiple computer displays. Silverlight 4 also supports webcams and microphones, plus offline digital rights management (DRM), Guthrie said.

For "trusted applications," Microsoft has added the ability for developers to make apps with custom window chromes, access to local file systems, support for cross-site networking, keyboard use during full-screen mode, and deeper hardware support. The Silverlight team also added more capabilities for building enterprise apps: implicit styles, drag and drop, more foreign languages and HTML support.

Developers can use Visual Studio 2010, which Microsoft released Monday, and Expression Blend 4 to build Silverlight apps.

Guthrie said Silverlight is "approaching" 60 percent penetration – at the Professional Developers Conference in November, he said Silverlight was installed on about 40 percent of computers.

More information about Silverlight 4 is available here.

Silverlight 4 Launch Event

Return here April 13th at 8:00 AM PST(http://www.silverlight.net/resources/images/content/misc/Silverlight-4-Launch-with-Scott-Guthrie-April-14-2010.ics)

Live streaming from the DevConnections Silverlight 4 launch. Watch Scott Guthrie's keynote plus interviews with Scott and members of the Microsoft Silverlight and Expression teams.

• 8:00 - 9:15 AM: Scott Guthrie's Keynote
• 9:15 - 4:00 PM: Channel 9 Live

http://www.silverlight.net/

Silverlight 4 to launch April 13

Microsoft execs said last month that the final version of Silverlight 4 would be available in April. It looks like the “launch” date is April 13, though as of April 7, company execs weren’t ready to promise that’s when final code will be available.

An aside: In Microsoft’s world, “launches” are not necessarily simultaneous with “release to manufacturing” and/or “release to the Web.” Sometimes launches follow RTM (as will be the case with Office 2010) and sometimes they precede the RTM/RTW.

I’m betting Silverlight 4 will be released to the Web on or before April 13, and I bet Microsoft is, too. But a spokeswoman would only say: “April 13 is the launch, but we haven’t announced a specific date for the release. Silverlight 4 will be available later this month.”)

It’s going to be a busy one for Microsoft’s developer division next week, with Visual Studio 2010 launching on April 12. (VS 2010 also still has yet to be released to manufacturing, as of this writing, but I’m guessing it will by Monday next week.)

If you are interested in watching the Silverlight 4 launch — and Corporate Vice President Scott Guthrie’s keynote — via Webcast, it starts at 11 a.m. ET.

Given that Silverlight is now the primary development environment for Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 platform, wannabe Microsoft Phone developers may want to tune in to see what’s coming for the platform, even though Microsoft will be running a hybrid of Silverlight 3/4 as its first-generation Windows Phone 7 dev environment. Silverlight 4 won’t run on the Windows Phone 7 devices right off the bat, but Silverlight will be supported on those phones (someday)….

Silverlight Grows to 60% on Internet Connected Devices

Question. What software product was shipped over two years ago and it is now has been introduce to cover sporting events including Major League Soccer, the Winter Olympics, Sunday Night Football.  March Madness event will also be carried. It’s even being used for sundry events like the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show and the Ultimate Fighting Championship.
Answer: Microsoft Silverlight.

This is just another innovation that Windows7 is tacking on as its own and making the most of it. In fact Silverlight goes beyond Windows7, it is a cross platform product.

Not to be confined to the Windows world, Microsoft is looking ahead as it pushes it video technology beyond current operating systems. For starters, Microsoft is currently at work preparing the final development build of Silverlight 4. Earlier builds have been made available in the Windows environment as well as Mac OS X users. The final release expected by April 2010. Even Linux users have been included. They have Moonlight 2 which is available for download, and Moonlight 3 as a preview has already also been offered.

What makes Silverlight so useful?

Merely two years ago web developers were not impressed with Silverlight. The considered it a knockoff of Adobe Flash. But things have changed. Silverlight’s features such as Deep Zoom, Smooth Streaming, support for HD content, etc., represents new opportunities in the area of web development. So programming shops have new, more powerful technologies to build with. The new mentality at work for programmers will be use it or be left out of using new features and capabilities.  Silverlight 4 and the introduction of new technologies such as the Silverlight Analytics Framework means that developers can not continue to ignore Silverlight.

Showcasing Silverlight

At this site you can browse live Silverlight projects from around the world. Currently there are over 850 apps developed using Silverlight that have been uploaded to the Microsoft Showcasing Site.

At MIX10, the Silverlight 4 Release Candidate (RC) was released. Here are some instructional videos and labs that you can use to learn about the product:

• Silverlight 4 Download & Information
• Silverlight 4 Videos
• Silverlight 4 Hands On Labs
• Silverlight 4 Samples

Market Share

Last November at the professional developes conference Microsoft announced that Silverlight was installed on 45 percent of all Internet-connected devices in the world. But now that number is now approaching 60 percent and accelerating rapidly. It looks like Flash, the application that Microsoft was interested in competing against, is losing its dominance.

Silverlight Market Penetration

Rah – Rah – Raw

Although it is easy to jump on the Silverlight bandwagon, there have been glitches in the software that have forced some websites to drop the product. Last year MLB.com, that is Major League Baseball.com  decided to drop its association with Microsoft Silverlight. The was due to the fact that users couldn’t download the product if they didn’t have administrative rights. This apparently frustrated many users who were trying to download the product at work but couldn’t do so. (Were talking about reporters and other news organizations that would be reporting on Baseball.)

Whether this influences other sporting organizations remains to be seen. But this decision was not without financial fallout. MLB runs a very profitable web site and problems with Silverlight are bound to make other sports organizations nervous.

But in an unrelated area, Netflix users suspected Silverlight have been responsible for a series of glitches that occurred with the streaming-video service. Microsoft didn’t back away from the critizism and acknowledged that its player was instrumental in at least some problems when it reported that Silverlight 3, unlike Silverlight 2, could assist Netflix customers who run lower-end computers, and who were experiencing dropped frames and poor viewing quality.

Most of these problems will probably be solved with the latest iteration, Silverlight 4. Microsoft is certainly banking on it.

Microsoft's "Silverlight Client for Facebook" Updated for Silverlight 4

Silverlight Client for Facebook brings together the many compelling platform capabilities of Silverlight 4 RC into a rich out-of-browser application in the familiar context of Facebook.  Enjoy the photos, feeds, events, friends’ walls, and inbox mail from your Facebook account in an appealing and user-friendly environment.  (Thanks Tim)

1)  Ensure Silverlight 4 RC is Installed:

• Install Silverlight 4 for Windows
• Install Silverlight 4 for Mac OSX (Intel)

2)  Visit Silverlight Client for Facebook

Silverlight 4 SDK Release Candidate (RC)

Concomitantly with the availability of the Silverlight 4 Release Candidate, Microsoft also provided developers with the necessary tools to start adapting content for the next version of the company’s alternative to Adobe Flash. In addition to the near-final Silverlight 4 bits, devs can also grab the Release Candidate development milestone of the software development kit for Silverlight 4. According to the Redmond company, the Silverlight 4 SDK RC brings to the table both libraries and tools designed to streamline developing Silverlight applications.

In addition to the libraries and tools in the SDK, the resource also features links pointing developers to online documentation and makes it easier for them to access online samples to help with the coding. “The toolkit provides support for Visual Studio 2010 and Silverlight 4 development. The Toolkit provides numerous controls for your application and source code is also included for these controls using an Open Source license,” Microsoft noted.

One thing to keep in mind is that Silverlight 4 RC doesn’t come with a go-live license. Microsoft underlined both with the Beta and the RC that the Builds were developer previews designed for testing, and should be kept away from production. At the same time, devs will not have to wait all that long until they will be able to provide Silverlight 4 content, websites and applications to end users. The promise from Scott Guthrie, corporate vice president, .NET Developer Platform, is that Silverlight 4 will be finalized and released to web in April 2010.
“This latest version of Silverlight delivers hundreds of features and controls that, when combined with the continued innovation in Microsoft’s world-class tools for designers and developers — Microsoft Visual Studio and Microsoft Expression Blend – present the leading edge in rapid, powerful application development. With printing support, rich reporting and charting, and integration with back-end systems and server products including Microsoft SharePoint, Silverlight is ready for business,” Microsoft stated.

Silverlight 4 SDK Release Candidate (RC) is available for download here.

Silverlight 4 Release Candidate (RC) Build 4.0.50303.0 is available for download here.

The Silverlight 4 Training Kit is available for download here.

Download Silverlight 4 Training Course

Microsoft has released a Silverlight 4 Training Course as a download. The Silverlight 4 Training Course includes a whitepaper explaining all of the new Silverlight 4 RC features, several hands-on-labs that explain the features, and a 8 unit course for building business applications with Silverlight 4.

The business applications course includes 8 modules with extensive hands on labs as well as 25 accompanying videos that walk you through key aspects of building a business application with Silverlight.

Key aspects in this course are working with numerous sandboxed and elevated out of browser features, the new RichTextBox control, implicit styling, webcam, drag and drop, multi touch, validation, authentication, MEF, WCF RIA Services, right mouse click, and much more!

Download: Microsoft.

Microsoft set to launch beta of Silverlight for Symbian

In March 2008, Microsoft and Nokia announced their commitment to make Silverlight available for certain Nokia phones running the Symbian operating system. Microsoft is finally ready to make a beta of that code available.

Microsoft briefly posted, then pulled, the download of the beta of the Silverlight for Symbian code on March 11, as well as the associated developer tools for that release. I grabbed the description of the downloads before they were zapped.

From the description of the tools:

“The installable executable file enables users to run Silverlight applications on the Nokia S60 5th Edition platform. The executable file includes the Silverlight runtime for Nokia S60 5th Edition devices, the Silverlight runtime for Nokia S60 5th Edition emulator, sample applications, and developer documentation.”

And from the description of the Silverlight for Symbian beta:

“The installable executable enables user to run Silverlight applications on the Nokia S60 5th Edition platform.”

Microsoft is likely to make the downloads of these two offerings available the week of March 14, given that the company’s annual Mix Web developer conference kicks off that week.

When Microsoft and Nokia announced two years ago their deal to develop the port of Silverlight to Symbian, the pair said to expect the final code before the end of 2008. They’ll be close to two years late if they deliver the final by the end of this calendar year.

Microsoft officials also have been hinting that a port of Silverlight to Android was just around the corner for the past year-plus. I’m wondering if we might get an update on that port, as well, at Mix 10, given that Microsoft is expected to roll out in detail its Silverlight for Windows Phone 7 OS plans at next week’s confab….

Microsoft readies open-source analytics framework for Silverlight

Microsoft plans to release for download via its Codeplex site a free, open-source analytics framework for Silverlight the week of March 15.

Michael Scherotter, a Microsoft Media Experience Evangelist, is slated to share more about the framework at Microsoft’s Mix 10 Web conference in Las Vegas next week.

The framework is designed to allow developers to integrate Web analytics into Silverlight applications. It will be able to track out-of-browser and offline applications, as well as support multiple analytics services from various third-party vendors, according to information on Microsoft’s Mix Web site. Scherotter provided a few more details about the Silverlight Analytics Framework on his blog this week.

“The process over these past seven months has been to reach out to as many of the analytics vendors and control vendors as we could and build an inclusive framework that supports all different types of analytics that are relevant to application designers and developers,” Scherotter blogged.

The new framework will support designers using Microsoft’s Expression Blend tool to build applications without coding, Scherotter said. It also will work with Microsoft’s SketchFlow tool and the Silverlight Media Framework.

Today, analytics for measuring the performance of a rich Internet app is often done after the fact, done incompletely or even not done at all. “Current ways to instrument applications are cumbersome, are focusing on instrumentation of Web pages and sometimes not appropriate to next generation interactive connected applications,” Microsoft officials said in a March 11 post on the Silverlight Team blog. The new open-source framework will allow developers to “instrument” their applications in a deeper and easier way, officials blogged.

Mix 10 will be a showcase for Silverlight, especially Silverlight 4, which is due to ship in the first half of 2010. Silverlight is one of the keys to Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 developer pitch, which company officials also are slated to discuss at next week’s conference.

Download Free Silverlight 4 Training Course from Microsoft

Microsoft has released a Silverlight 4 Training Course. This Silverlight 4 Training Course from Microsoft, includes hands-on-labs, a video and a whitepaper designed to help you learn about the new features in Silverlight 4 focusing on three major areas.

These areas are:

- Enabling Business Application Development
- Empowering Richer Experiences
- Moving Beyond the Browser.

Some of the new highly anticipated features in Silverlight, include Printing, WebCam and Microphone support, custom right-click, rich text, HTML support and access to local files with trusted applications.

After downloading, run the self extracting executable. When prompted, indicate where you would like to install the files. Then navigate to the installation folder you selected and run the Default.htm page to view the materials.

Download:  Microsoft.

Microsoft enables Silverlight video streaming to iPhones

Apple hasn't suddenly changed its mind about allowing browser plug-ins for the iPhone, but Microsoft worked some server magic to enable Silverlight-encoded video to be served to an iPhone using the standard HTML5 <video> tag.

At PDC 2009, Microsoft demonstrated Silverlight video streaming to an iPhone. While Microsoft user experience platform manager Brian Goldfarb said that Microsoft "worked with Apple" to make it happen, don't expect plug-ins for Mobile Safari to start flooding the App Store. Instead, Microsoft worked to make its IIS7 server software capable of sending an QuickTime-compatible stream to an iPhone embedded with a HTML5 <video> tag.

Though Silverlight is more than just a video format—it's more of .NET authoring runtime for web-based applications, much like Flash as become—its media delivery features are what content providers wanted on the iPhone. "The promise of Silverlight is that it's a cross-device, cross-browser, cross-platform solution, and it works the same on Macs as it does on Windows," Goldfarb told BetaNews. "The iPhone is a unique scenario. We talked to our customers...and they said, 'Look, we just need to get our content there, and it's mainly in the media space like broadcasting, and we want to put it on the iPhone.'"

The true extent of "working with Apple," though, has more to do with making sure the system would work and that Apple didn't disapprove. "We did all the work," Goldfarb said. "We just made sure Apple was comfortable with it. We have to have a strong partnership with our partners, we have to have trust, and that's key."

What Microsoft did was enable IIS Media Services respond to requests from an iPhone and transcode on-demand to H.264 format in an MPEG-2 transport stream, the exact same format used by Apple's proposed HTTP Live Streaming protocol. "So it's the same IIS smooth streaming content, the same server, the same point of origin, but now I can get that content to play without any code changes, without any real work, on the iPhone," Goldfarb explained. "That's the critical thing for our customers."

We won't be seeing an Silverlight runtime (nor a Flash one, for that matter) popping up on the iPhone. But content providers already using or considering IIS Media Services won't have to encode video separately or maintain a separate content delivery system for serving their content to the hottest mobile platform. So the real question is, when can I start streaming Netflix to my iPhone?

Source: ArsTechnica

Silverlight 4 Beta Is Now Available for Developers

Here are the download links for Silverlight 4 Beta Windows Runtime and Silverlight 4 Beta Mac Runtime. If I were you I wouldn’t exactly rush to download this. Microsoft is saying that the Beta for Silverlight 4 is a developer release only. And there’s no go-live license, so testing is about the only thing the Silverlight Beta 4 is suited for. Details from Microsoft after the jump.

Silverlight 4 Beta Information

On November 18, 2009, at the Professional Developer’s Conference in Los Angeles, Microsoft Corp. unveiled a Beta version Silverlight 4. This latest version delivers hundreds of features and controls that, when combined with the continued innovation in Microsoft’s world-class tools for designers and developers — Microsoft Visual Studio and Microsoft Expression Blend – present the leading edge in rapid, powerful application development. With printing support, rich reporting and charting, and integration with back-end systems and server products including Microsoft SharePoint, Silverlight is ready for business.

This is a developer beta release only! This release of Silverlight 4 Beta is a developer release. What this means is that there is no “go-live” licensing available and the end-user runtime of Silverlight 4 is not available. The tools below are intended for software developers only.

What’s New in Silverlight 4 Beta?

Silverlight 4 delivers a full suite of powerful capabilities to business application developers, bringing the best-of-breed .NET platform to browser-based experiences. Silverlight provides an ideal platform for developing and deploying modern business applications for both customer facing and staff-facing applications.

Business Application Development

Silverlight 4 consolidates its position as the natural choice for building business applications on the Web:

New Features for Application Developers

* Comprehensive printing support enabling hardcopy reports and documents as well as a virtual print view, independent of screen content.

* A full set of forms controls with over 60 customizable, styleable components. New controls include RichTextbox with hyperlinks, images and editing and Masked textbox for complex field validation. Enhanced controls include DataGrid with sortable/resizeable columns and copy/paste rows.

* WCF RIA Services introduces enterprise class networking and data access for building n-tier applications including transactions, paging of data, WCF and HTTP enhancements.

* Localization enhancements with Bi-Directional text, Right-to-Left support and complex scripts such as Arabic, Hebrew and Thai and 30 new languages.

* The .NET Common Runtime (CLR) now enables the same compiled code to be run on the desktop and Silverlight without change.

* Enhanced databinding support increases flexibility and productivity through data grouping/editing and string formatting within bindings.

* Managed Extensibility Framework supports building large composite applications.

* Exclusive tooling support for Silverlight, new in Visual Studio 2010. Including a full editable design surface, drag & drop data-binding, automatically bound controls, datasource selection, integration with Expression Blend styling resources, Silverlight project support and full IntelliSense.

Developer tools

* Fully editable design surface for drawing out controls and layouts.

* Rich property grid and new editors for values

* Drag and drop support for databinding and automatically creating bound controls such as listbox, datagrid. New datasources window and picker.

* Easy to pick styles and resources to make a good looking application based on designer resources built in Expression Blend.

* Built in project support for Silverlight applications

* Editor with full intellisense for XAML and C# and VB languages.

Empowering richer, more interactive experiences

Silverlight is already in use as a comprehensive platform for building rich experiences both for application and pure media scenarios including HD quality, interactive video through Smooth Streaming. Silverlight 4 introduces additional capabilities to enable creation of ever more rich, appealing high-performance interactive experiences and innovative media experiences:

* Fluid interface enhancements advance application usability through animation effects.

* Webcam and microphone to allow sharing of video and audio for instance for chat or customer service applications.

* Audio and video local recording capabilities capture RAW video without requiring server interaction, enabling a wide range of end-user interaction and communication scenarios for example video conferencing.

* Bring data in to your application with features such as copy and paste or drag and drop.

* Long lists can now be scrolled effortlessly with the mouse wheel.

* Support conventional desktop interaction models through new features such as right-click context menu.

* Support for Google’s Chrome browser.

* Performance optimizations mean Silverlight 4 applications start quicker and run 200% faster than the equivalent Silverlight 3 application.

* Deep Zoom enhancements include hardware acceleration to support larger datasets and faster animation.

* Multi-touch support enables a range of gestures and touch interactions to be integrated into user experiences.

* Multicast networking, enabling Enterprises to lower the cost of streaming broadcast events such as company meetings and training, interoperating seamlessly with existing Windows Media Server streaming infrastructure.

* Content protection for H.264 media through Silverlight DRM powered by PlayReady.

* Output protection for audio/video streams allowing content owners or distributors to ensure protected content is only viewed through a secure video connection.

Move beyond the browser

Silverlight 3 pioneered the delivery of a new class of Rich Internet Applications to work on the desktop without additional code or runtimes. Silverlight 4 extends this capability:

For Sandboxed applications

* Place HTML within your application enabling much tighter integration with content from web servers such as email, help and reports.

* Provide support for ‘toast’ notification windows, allowing applications to communicate status or change information while the user is working on another application through a popup window on the taskbar.

* Offline DRM, extending the existing Silverlight DRM powered by PlayReady technology to work offline. Protected content can be delivered with an embedded license so that users can go offline immediately and start enjoying their content.

* Control over aspects of UI include window settings such as start position, size and chrome.

For Trusted applications

* Read and write files to the user’s MyDocuments, MyMusic, MyPictures and MyVideos folder (or equivalent for non-windows platforms) for example storage of media files and taking local copies of reports.

* Run other desktop programs such as Office, for example requesting Outlook to send an email, send a report to Word or data to Excel.

* COM automation enables access to devices and other system capabilities by calling into application components; for instance to access a USB security card reader.

* A new user interface for requesting application privileges access outside the standard Silverlight sandbox.

* Group policy objects allow organizations to tailor which applications may have elevated trust.

* Full keyboard support in fullscreen mode richer kiosk and media applications.

* Enhancements to networking allow cross-domain access without a security policy file.

Ensure that you have Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 or Visual Web Developer Express 2010 Beta 2 installed as it is a prerequisite for developing Silverlight 4 Beta applications using Visual Studio. Below are the additional tools you’ll want to get started:

• Silverlight 4 Beta Tools for Visual Studio 2010
  This will install the developer runtime of Silverlight 4 Beta, the Visual Studio project support and the Silverlight 4 SDK. If you are developing Silverlight 4 Beta applications, this will be the minimum you want to install!
• Windows Runtime or Mac Runtime
  If you installed the tools above, you will get the developer runtime and there is no need to install again. These downloads are being made available for test machines for the Windows and Mac platforms for your applications.
• Microsoft Expression Blend for .NET 4 Preview
  This is a preview version of Expression Blend that will enable authoring of Silverlight 4 Beta applications.
• Silverlight Toolkit
  The toolkit has been updated to provide support for Visual Studio 2010 and Silverlight 4 beta development. The Toolkit provides numerous controls for your application and source code is also included for these controls using an Open Source license.
• WCF RIA Services
  Microsoft WCF RIA Services simplifies the traditional n-tier application pattern by bringing together the ASP.NET and Silverlight platforms. The RIA Services provides a pattern to write application logic that runs on the mid-tier and controls access to data for queries, changes and custom operations. It also provides end-to-end support for common tasks such as data validation, authentication and roles by integrating with Silverlight components on the client and ASP.NET on the mid-tier.
• Online Silverlight 4 Beta Documentation
• Offline CHM help Silverlight 4 Beta Documentation file download

Once you have the tools you need to get started, view more information below to walk you through some of the new features in detail and download some sample code.

Getting Started with Silverlight 4 Beta

To help you get started in development, we’ve created some initial learning material for you. Here are some resources to help get started with your hands-on development of Silverlight 4 Beta!

• Videos and Sample Code
  This is a series of videos covering the top Silverlight 4 Beta features in more detail with available source sample code in C# and Visual Basic.
• Guides and labs
  Explore Silverlight 4 using these hands-on labs.
• Read the “What’s New” Whitepaper By John Papa
• Watch the “What’s New in Silverlight 4 Beta” video
• View Silverlight 4 beta SparklingClient Podcasts
  The Silverlight 4 Podcast Pack is a collection of 8 podcasts all about Silverlight 4. It was recorded by Erik Mork of the Sparkling Client podcast with Tim Heuer of Microsoft. It’s Creative Commons licensed so feel free to share and repost it.
• Silverlight Blogs
  Keep up to date on more videos/materials by subscribing to the blogs of Tim Heuer, Jesse Liberty, John Papa and Adam Kinney who will be providing more updates to Silverlight 4 Beta. You may also want to subscribe to the Silverlight community blogs for updates from our MVP community.
• Help From the Forums
  The forums are available during your evaluation through on the Silverlight community site. We have established forums for assistance with Silverlight 4 Beta and WCF RIA Services. Please use these forums only for Silverlight 4 Beta or WCF RIA Services questions you may have and provide as much detail as you can for assistance.

We’re excited about this Silverlight 4 Beta release and hope that you can get started right away with the new features developing great Silverlight applications!