Silverlight 2 Now Full Public Beta

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Silverlight 2 Beta2 was released last week. This is the major milestone that supports a commercial go-live license, which means the platform is considered stable and robust enough to support mission critical applications.

Microsoft Silverlight 2

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Read Scott Guthrie and my teammate Sam Chenaur's blog entries for details on the release.

While some people may perceive Silverlight still in its infancy compared to Flash, I continue to be amazed at the sophistication and quality of solutions developers are building on Silverlight. I also think this is becoming another proof point that specialized platforms do add significant value when implemented effectively, and one-size-fits-all "good enough" platforms have their limits. Consequently, the strategy to pursue a diversified platform approach, is actually not any more imprudent than choosing to focus on one platform. And ultimately, more choice for customers (i.e., Silverlight, ASP.NET AJAX, WPF, WinForms, Office Business Applications, SharePoint, Live Mesh, etc.; as choices in customer-facing platform components) may seem a bit complex, but do offer extraordinary value. In the case of user interface platforms, more choices allow delivery of specialized and high-fidelity user experiences to different user segments, as opposed to requiring all users to work with the same "lowest common denominator" user experience (i.e., HTML-based).

Some of the most compelling Silverlight applications I have seen (many are registered on Silverlight Showcase) are listed below.

 

General Info:

Media sites/demos:

Rich application sites/demos:

Casual Games:

Reusable Controls (for enterprise applications):

Now these are just some of my favorites. But with the pace of developers building cool Silverlight applications, this list may need to be updated very frequently (last updated 7/11/08).