Silverlight 2 for Mobile Announced at PDC

  • Article

If you have been wondering about Silverlight for Mobile, watch this session.  The session has a few slides up front with some commentary for a few minutes but then gets straight to some great demos and details on the future of Silverlight for Mobile.  To watch the Silverlight 2 for Mobile PDC online session, here is the link.  Some highlights are listed below.

Session Title: PC10 Microsoft Silverlight 2 for Mobile: Developing for Mobile Devices

Abstract: Wouldn't it be super cool if the Silverlight apps you build for the desktop can now run on Millions of Mobile Devices ? If you have been building Silverlight applications and are wondering how to extend them mobile devices, this is just the right session for you. In this session, filled with some very cool demos you will not only learn how to extend your existing Silverlight 2 applications to work on Windows Mobile but also learn how to build rich mobile Silverlight apps that play media, handle simple gestures, have cool animations, and web services. We will also talk about tooling enhancements in Visual Studio that support Silverlight app development on Windows Mobile, what to consider when delivering eye-popping UI on mobile, and help you understand the key differences from developing Silverlight apps for the desktop.

Download: WMV-HQ | WMV | Zune | MP4 | PPTX

Some highlights from the session:

A public CTP for Silverlight 2 for Mobile is planned for Q1 CY 09.

Silverlight 2 for Mobile runs inside of IE on the device.  It takes advantage of the .NET Compact Framework installed on the device.  There isn't an additional project template for mobile development.  You essentially deploy your desktop application to the device, i.e. Silverlight 2 for Mobile executes the same .xap file.  The Silverlight for Mobile tools adds another deployment option to the existing desktop Silverlight project template to deploy the application to a device.

The goal for Silverlight 2 for mobile is parity with desktop Silverlight 2, however, items mentioned in the video that won't be supported are:

  • MediaBrush
  • Silverlight DLR

Silverlight 2 for Mobile will target some version of Windows Mobile 6.x or higher.