Release Candidate for Silverlight 4 Ships at MIX10

Microsoft announced a release candidate (RC) for Silverlight 4, available for download today at MIX10. Silverlight 4 builds on the beta version released at the Professional Developers Conference in November 2009.

Get started with Silverlight 4.

Silverlight 4 RC provides powerful media and enterprise application and media capabilities, out-of-browser flexibility and world-class tools support via Visual Studio and Expression Blend with Sketchflow to enable robust application development and rich interactive experiences.

Expression Blend 4 Beta, a design and development workflow tool, was announced. New features such as Path Layout enable developers and designers to build and animate innovative user interface design via a groundbreaking visual layout mechanism, without the need to write code. Expression Blend 4 Beta also adds support for Silverlight 4, .NET Framework 4 and Visual Studio 2010. 

Download Expression Blend Preview for .NET 4.

Silverlight Customer Adoption Reaches 60% of All Internet Devices

Silverlight adoption has continued at a rapid pace with installations approaching 60 percent of all Internet devices worldwide — an increase of nearly 15 percentage points in just four months. Customers such as Major League Soccer, BBC, eBay Inc., Netflix Inc., NBCOlympics.com and CT Corp., a Wolters Kluwer business, demonstrated how they are taking advantage of the power of Silverlight to deliver compelling consumer and enterprise experiences.

“Microsoft Silverlight technology will be the backbone of the video platform on our newly launched MLSsoccer.com,” said Chris Schlosser, director of digital strategy for Major League Soccer. “Our work with Microsoft allows us to launch cutting-edge digital and mobile experiences for our loyal fans. As part of our increased focus on digital media, we view a rich video experience as absolutely critical to accomplishing our goal of ‘super serving’ MLS supporters.”

Silverlight 4 Features for Developers, Users

Silverlight 4 delivers a full suite of powerful capabilities to business application developers, bringing the best-of-breed .NET platform to browser-based experiences.

For a complete list, see What’s New in Silverlight 4 Beta?

Here’s some highlights for business application development:

• Printing support
• A full set of forms controls with over 60 customizable, styleable components.
• WCF RIA Services introduces enterprise class networking and data access for building n-tier applications.
• Localization enhancements with bi-directional text, right-to-left support and complex scripts such as Arabic, Hebrew and Thai and 30 new languages.
• The .NET Common Runtime (CLR) now enables the same compiled code to be run on the desktop and Silverlight without change.
• Enhanced databinding support,
• Managed Extensibility Framework

Here’s some highlights for developer tools:

• Fully editable design surface for drawing out controls and layouts.
• Rich property grid and new editors for values
• Drag and drop support for databinding and automatically creating bound controls.
• Easy to pick styles and resources to make a good looking application based on designer resources built in Expression Blend.
• Built in project support for Silverlight applications
• Editor with full intellisense for XAML and C# and VB languages.

Silverlight is already in use as a comprehensive platform for building rich experiences both for application and pure media scenarios including HD quality, interactive video through Smooth Streaming. Silverlight 4 introduces additional capabilities to enable creation of ever more rich, appealing high-performance interactive experiences and innovative media experiences:

• Fluid interface enhancements advance application usability through animation effects.
• Webcam and microphone to allow sharing of video and audio for instance for chat or customer service applications.
• Audio and video local recording capabilities.
• Bring data in to your application with features such as copy and paste or drag and drop.
• Long lists can now be scrolled effortlessly with the mouse wheel.
• Support conventional desktop interaction models through new features such as right-click context menu.
• Support for Google’s Chrome browser.
• Performance optimizations mean Silverlight 4 applications start quicker and run 200% faster than the equivalent Silverlight 3 application.
• Multi-touch support enables a range of gestures and touch interactions to be integrated into user experiences.
• Multicast networking, enabling Enterprises to lower the cost of streaming broadcast events such as company meetings and training, interoperating seamlessly with existing Windows Media Server streaming infrastructure.
• Content protection for H.264 media through Silverlight DRM powered by PlayReady.
• Output protection for audio/video streams allowing content owners or distributors to ensure protected content is only viewed through a secure video connection.

Silverlight 3 pioneered the delivery of a new class of Rich Internet Applications to work on the desktop without additional code or runtimes.

Get Started with Silverlight 4

You can get started by getting developer tools. See Get the Tools.

To help you get started in development, we’ve created some initial learning material for you. Here are some resources to help get started with your hands-on development of Silverlight 4 Beta!

• Videos
  This is a series of videos covering the top Silverlight 4 Beta features in more detail with available source sample code in C# and Visual Basic.
• Sample Applications
  Download the sample applications including the ones shown during the PDC09 keynote presentation.
• Guides and labs
  Explore Silverlight 4 using these hands-on labs.
• Read the "What’s New" Whitepaper By John Papa

Bruce D. KyleISV Architect Evangelist | Microsoft Corporation