Silverlight Gets Serious

So today we announced Silverlight 2 Beta 2. There are a lot of features that are noteworthy but the most exciting thing is that this release is the first release of Silverlight 2 that has a go-live license. When this release is available later this week, you’ll finally be able to create and commercially deploy Silverlight 2 applications.

Another thing great about the keynote at TechEd today was the repetition of our vision for developers: Learn Once, Apply Anywhere. These four words are the way that I simply express where we’re going with our platform and tools. As a developer or a business, you want to make a bet on one thing and have that bet pay off everywhere that you or your business need to go. With Microsoft, you can learn one set of tools and platforms to target everything from your servers to your clients whether they’re browser based, desktop, or mobile. This is something that no one else can offer you.

So on to the details of the fun stuff that’s brand new in Beta 2:

· UI Framework: Beta 2 includes improvements in animation support, error handling and reporting, automation and accessibility support, keyboard input support, and general performance.  This release also provides more compatibility between Silverlight and WPF.

· Rich Controls: Beta 2 includes a new templating model called Visual State Manager that allows for easier templating for controls. Other features include the introduction of TabControl, text wrapping and scrollbars for TextBox, and for DataGrid additions include Autosize, Reorder, Sort, performance increases and more.  Most controls are now in the runtime instead of packaged with the application.

· Networking Support: Beta 2 includes improved Cross Domain support and security enhancements, upload support for WebClient, and duplex communications (“push” from server to Silverlight client).

· Rich Base Class Library: Beta 2 includes improved threading abilities, LINQ-to-JSON, ADO.NET Data Services support, better support for SOAP, and various other improvements to make networking and data handling easier.

· Deep Zoom: Beta 2 introduces a new XML-based file format for Deep Zoom image tiles, as well as a new MultiScaleTileSource that enables existing tile databases to utilize Deep Zoom. Better, event driven notification for zoom/pan state is another improvement in Silverlight 2 Beta 2.