Silverlight 2.0 Announced

Silverlight 1.1 2.0 recently highlighted some exciting news!  First of all, obviously we have the name change from 1.1 to 2.0.  The team blogs, including Scott Guthrie's, mention that they realized there was simply too much in the next release to kid themselves into thinking it was an extension release instead of a wholly new version.  Alongside this announcement came the news that the Silverlight 2.0 Beta is expected in Q1 of 2008.  Not only that, but the release will include a Go-Live license.  If you're a developer who is excited about deploying your Silverlight site with .Net, this should be great news for you!

Other great features to be included with Silverlight 2.0 are:

  • imageAll of the existing Silverlight 1.1 Alpha features you know and love, like .Net and the Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR)
  • Rich controls for UI like textbox, buttons, etc.
  • Layout - this is one of the most exciting and highly anticipated features!  StackPanel and a Grid are expected.
  • Data Manipulation control - another question I get all the time about Silverlight :) now we will have a DataGrid.
  • Cross-domain Access: ability to access resources and content from trusted sources
  • Support for Networking: REST, POX, RSS, etc.
  • .Net Base Class Library: collections, generics, threading, I/O, globalization, local storage, and more
  • Built-in support for LINQ-to-XML

I can't wait to see the layout & data controls, and of course everything else, so I am really looking forward to the Beta release!

Technorati Tags: Silverlight , Microsoft

Cross posted from Martha's Blog