Preparing for Silverlight 1.0 RC and Beyond

In just a couple of weeks, we'll be ready to publish the Release Candidate of Silverlight 1.0 to the web. We're in the final stages of stabilization as we close in on launch; fixing the last few bugs, doing detailed security penetration testing work, resolving any remaining inconsistencies and completing the last fit and finish work.

As Joe Stegman intimates in his recent blog posting, there are a few breaking changes between the beta and release candidate. Moving forward, the API is stable: there should be no further breaking changes between the release candidate and the final release. If you've already released a Silverlight application today based on the beta, we wanted to give you some advanced warning and ability to prepare for the RC so that your page isn't broken when the release candidate comes out.

To that end, we've prepared a special preview SDK release that contains the following items:

  • A new silverlight.js file that detects both the beta and the RC version;
  • A breaking changes document that highlights differences between the beta and RC;
  • An updated Visual Studio template that demonstrates the correct way to embed the new control;
  • A EULA that governs legal usage of the above items.

Using the above resources, you should be able to fairly quickly convert your Silverlight object across so that it runs on both the beta and the release candidate without change. To be clear, this preview release does not contain the Silverlight 1.0 RC itself; it's a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation in that we want to get sites ready before we release the RC, but it's hard for folk to be sure they're ready until we release the RC! Nevertheless, if you follow the breaking changes advice and update silverlight.js now, you can hopefully get to a point where your code is ready for Silverlight 1.0 RC after a quick smoke test.

Download the preview here.