Last week at TechEd, Soma Somasegar and Bill Gates announced that Silverlight 2 Beta 2 is now publicly available.  Silverlight 2 Beta 2 includes the following high-level capabilities:

UI Framework: Beta 2 includes improvements in animation support, error handling and reporting, automation and accessibility support, keyboard input support, and general performance. This release also provides more compatibility between Silverlight and WPF.

Rich Controls: Beta 2 includes a new template model called Visual State Manager that allows for easier creating control templates.  Other features include the introduction of TabControl, text wrapping and scrollbars for TextBox, and for DataGrid additions include Autosize, Reorder, Sort, performance increases and more.  Most controls are now in the runtime instead of packaged with the application.

Networking Support: Beta 2 includes improved Cross Domain support and security enhancements, upload support for WebClient, and duplex communications (“push” from server to Silverlight client).

Rich Base Class Library: Beta 2 includes improved threading abilities, LINQ-to-JSON, ADO.NET Data Services support, better support for SOAP, and various other improvements to make networking and data handling easier.

Deep Zoom: Beta 2 introduces a new XML-based file format for Deep Zoom image tiles, as well as a new MultiScaleTileSource that enables existing tile databases to utilize Deep Zoom.  Better, event driven notification for zoom/pan state is another improvement in Silverlight 2 Beta 2. 

User Experience Advantages:

Today Microsoft released Silverlight 2 Beta 2, its cross-browser, cross-platform and now cross-device plug-in that enables customers to deliver a wide range of experiences across form factors:

RIA: Based on proven .NET technology, Silverlight provides unparalleled productivity by enabling the reuse of skills, codes and assets. Silverlight 2 includes over 40 new controls, cross-domain networking support for calling REST, WS*/SOAP, POX, RSS, and standard HTTP services and a rich .NET base class library of functionality (collections, IO, generics, threading, globalization, XML, local storage, etc).  Silverlight 2 also introduces Deep Zoom, which offers unparalleled interactivity with high resolution content.

Expression Studio and Visual Studio:  These tools provide role-specific productivity tools that empower designers and developers to easily collaborate on Silverlight projects.  Last week, Microsoft released “Expression Blend 2.5 2008 June Preview and Silverlight Tools Beta 2 for Visual Studio 2008

Media/Advertising: Silverlight offers true HD video and the lowest TCO solution for media delivery and consumption. Microsoft is enabling new business opportunities by making it easier to build ads that plug into Silverlight and work with myriad network and syndication providers in the ecosystem.  With support for Atlas and DoubleClick we are just at the tipping point of the amazing business opportunities possible with Silverlight.

Mobile: Silverlight dramatically simplifies the design, development and delivery of rich interactive applications and services on the Web, desktop, and devices.  Silverlight offers multiple benefits to the mobile industry including compelling cross-platform mobile experiences, multi-channel revenue opportunities, and industry leading application platform and tools.

Since the launch of Silverlight 1.0 last year, the interest and adoption of Silverlight continues to rise:

o    In addition to existing customers around the world such as Entertainment Tonight, NBA, MSN, Hard Rock, Home Shopping Network, BMW, BBC, Yahoo! Japan, and Baidu, Microsoft is looking forward to a strong line up of new content that will be based on Silverlight 2.  Notable examples include the upcoming Beijing Olympic Games and the Democratic National Convention.

o    Beijing Olympic Games will deliver to millions of online users exclusive access to an unprecedented offering of over 3,000 hours of live and on-demand video content. The combination of MSN’s audience reach and Microsoft’s Silverlight technology will allow NBC to deliver Olympics content to a broad U.S internet audience - all through an immersive and interactive video experience that will redefine how sports fans consume content online.

o    Democratic National Convention will leverage Silverlight 2 to deliver all four days of live convention coverage via live footage, data feeds, archived content, and speaker information overlays.

o    Over the last few months, the Silverlight Partner Initiative has grown significantly, comprising more than 85 members from content delivery networks, design agencies, ISVs and solution providers.  This will further fuel the adoption of Silverlight, and provide monetization opportunities for partners.

• Silverlight and Expression Studio are core technologies for enabling better user experiences on the desktop, Web and beyond. Microsoft’s user experience approach is part of the broader Microsoft Application Platform strategy, formed with the goal of helping customers realize the benefits of more dynamic applications.

Q&A

When are the Silverlight 2 Beta 2 bits going to be available?

SL 2 B2 was announced in today’s keynote and bits will be available for customers to download later this week. 

What is new in Silverlight 2 Beta 2?

As is typical with beta releases, we’ve made a number of incremental improvements based on customer feedback. This includes:

·   New and improved controls

·   Networking and data handling improvements

·   Improvements in error handling, reporting and development experience

·   Updates to Deep Zoom and animation 

·   Updates to ensure WPF compatibility

·   General improvements in performance

A full list of improvements and updates will be included in the release notes with the Silverlight 2 Beta 2 download.

What are the features of Silverlight 2?

Silverlight 2 builds on the foundation of Silverlight 1.0 but significantly extends the original development framework at every point.  The most important innovation that Microsoft brought to bear with Silverlight 2 is its support for managed code.  Because Silverlight 2 incorporates the core CLR classes, the runtime provides much richer networking stack support, including REST, RSS, JSON and POX and full support for LINQ including LINQ to JSON and LINQ to XML.  In addition to supporting C#, VB.NET and other managed code languages, Silverlight 2 includes support for Dynamic languages including Ruby and Python as well as a 2 way HTML/AJAX bridge for full integration of Silverlight with AJAX-enabled applications.

Silverlight 2 provides secure client-side persistence through Isolated Storage.  This dramatically reduces bandwidth requirements for any given RIA, as data can be cached locally on the client.

Should developers/organizations wait until Silverlight 2 RTW to build applications?

No, Silverlight 2 Beta 2 is a very stable and high quality build that comes with a commercial go-live license. Microsoft encourages developers to deploy their mission-critical applications on this release.   For example, NBC will deploy a large, mission-critical rich media site, NBCOlympics.com, using Silverlight 2 Beta 2.

Will my applications built on Silverlight 2 beta 1 be compatible with Silverlight 2 Beta 2?

Silverlight 2 Beta 2 introduces some changes that will break certain applications targeting the previous version of the beta, Silverlight 2 beta 1 (which is one of the main reasons that Microsoft recommended not using Silverlight 2 beta 1 for commercial deployment purposes). For a run down on the changes please visit http://www.silverlight.net

Will my applications built using Silverlight 1 be compatible with Silverlight 2 Beta 2? Yes.

Is Silverlight 2 Beta 2 compatible with Visual Studio 2008 and the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 betas?  Yes.

When will Silverlight 2 RTW?  We are on track for RTW in the Fall of 2008.

When will Microsoft release Silverlight for devices?

At MIX08 Microsoft an nounced its intentions to deliver Silverlight on mobile devices with a focus on Windows Mobile and Nokia based (S60, S40, N8xx Internet Tablet) devices as a first priority.  To date, Microsoft has created an invitation only private alpha program for Silverlight on Windows Mobile devices.  Stay tuned to PDC in October 2008 for the next round of details and a broader public release.

What is the number of Silverlight downloads to date? What is the latest the company is saying on adoption?

In addition to existing customers around the world such as Entertainment Tonight, NBA, MSN, Hard Rock, Home Shopping Network, BMW, BBC, Yahoo! Japan, and Baidu, Microsoft is looking forward to a strong line up of new content that will be based on Silverlight 2. Notable examples include the upcoming Beijing Olympic Games and the Democratic National Convention.

Beijing Olympic Games will deliver to online users exclusive access to an unprecedented offering of over 3,000 hours of live and on-demand video content. The combination of MSN’s audience reach and Microsoft’s Silverlight technology will allow NBC to deliver Olympics content to a broad U.S internet audience - all through an immersive and interactive video experience that will redefine how sports fans consume content online.

Democratic National Convention will leverage Silverlight 2 to deliver all four days of live convention coverage via live footage, data feeds, archived content, and speaker information overlays.

Over the last few months, the Silverlight Partner Initiative has grown significantly, comprising more than 85 members from content delivery networks, design agencies, ISVs and solution providers. This will further fuel the adoption of Silverlight, and provide monetization opportunities for partners.

What’s momentum been like for Silverlight?

We continue to see a significant number of downloads of Silverlight on a daily basis. As more and more customers launch their own Silverlight applications, we expect that number to continue to grow.  At this point, we are consistently seeing 1.5 million downloads (or more) per day.

Who is using Silverlight?  Here are three customer highlights:

NBC/Olympics: NBC Universal has chosen to partner with Microsoft to make “NBCOlympics.com on MSN” the official online home of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, China.  NBCOlympics.com on MSN will provide online users with exclusive access to an unprecedented offering of over 3,000 hours of live and on-demand video content. The combination of MSN’s audience reach and Microsoft’s Silverlight technology will allow NBC to deliver Olympics content to a broad U.S internet audience - all through an immersive and interactive video experience that will redefine how sports fans consume content online.

Hard Rock: Hard Rock is using Silverlight to enhance its showcase of celebrity paraphernalia on its Web site. But, to give you an idea of what this entails, say a site visitor wants to check out Eddie Vedder’s guitar – the visitor could spin it in 3-D, perform a deep zoom and check on the scratches from when Eddie has banged it up on stage, etc.  Some cool stuff to give fans closer access to celeb paraphernalia.

Weatherbug: Weatherbug is able to utilize Silverlight on Mobile Platforms as well as in a traditional PC/Mac environment to deliver a consistent user experience by re-using XAML assets across all platforms, in a cost effective manner by being able to use the same client side logic and back end services with only the need to customize some device specific keyboard and interaction handling.

Expression Blend 2.5 June 2008 Preview

Is customer support offered with the Expression Blend 2.5 June 2008 Preview?

Support for pre-release products is offered at www.microsoft.com http: href?>Microso=ftDiscussion forum where you cansolicit feedback and help get your questions answered by the Expressioncommunity.  You can find the discussion forum www.microsoft.com.

When will Expression Blend 2.5 be final?

We have not announced a release schedule for Expression Blend 2.5 however it is our intention to release it as soon as possible after Silverlight 2 is finally released.

When will Expression Studio 3 be released?  We have not announced a release schedule for Expression Studio 3.

Is Expression Blend 2.5 compatible with the tools in Expression Studio 2?  Yes.

Does Expression Blend support Silverlight 2?

Expression Blend will fully support Silverlight 2 in a future release. At TechEd we released an updated preview of Expression Blend 2.5 (Expression Blend 2.5 June 2008 Preview) to enable designers to start immediately exploring the power of Silverlight 2.  We are currently evaluating how best to release this to market once Silverlight 2 is finally released, however we are committed to releasing preview versions to support the Silverlight 2 preview versions.

Customers who purchase Expression Studio 2 or Expression Blend 2 will receive the future version of Expression Blend that supports Silverlight 2 for free.

Are the features in Silverlight 2 Beta 2 exposed in Expression Blend 2.5 June Preview?

A large number of the features of the Silverlight 2 Beta 2 are available, specifically those which focus on the visual, design aspects of the platform.

Is Expression Blend 2.5 June 2008 Preview compatible with Visual Studio 2008 SP1?  Yes.

Where can I download Expression 2.5 2008 June Preview?

The preview can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/expression/try-it/

Why isn’t the full Expression Studio included in MSDN Subscriptions?

We recognize the tremendous interest in the Microsoft Expression product line within the existing MSDN subscriber community and have included Expression tooling in the premium MSDN subscription levels as a result.

·   Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Suite with MSDN Premium includes Expression Studio.

·   All other MSDN Premium levels include Expression Web and Expression Blend.

Developers with design responsibilities want access to Expression just as designers with development responsibilities want access to Visual Studio. We provide tooling for each group with the MSDN subscription levels above for developers who do design -- and the new Expression Professional Subscription -- for designers who do development.

Which Expression products are included in each MSDN subscription level is a business decision reflecting our desire to continue meeting the needs of professional developers while delivering an "MSDN for Designers" option that appeals directly (and uniquely) to professional designers.

Silverlight Tools Beta 2 for Visual Studio 2008

What is the Silver= light Tools Beta 2 for Visual Studio 2008?

This package is an add-on to Visual Studio 2008 to provide tooling for Microsoft Silverlight 2 Beta 2. It provides a Silverlight project system for developing Silverlight applications using C# or Visual Basic. The project system includes:

·   Visual Basic and C# Project templates

·   Intellisense and code generators for XAML

·   Debugging of Silverlight applications

·   Web reference support

·   Integration with Expression Blend 2.5 2008 June Preview

Do I need to download Silverlight Tools Beta 2 for Visual Studio 2008 to build Silverlight 2 applications?

Microsoft recommends downloading and using Silverlight Tools for Visual Studio to take advantage of features such as a visual design surface, intellisense, automatic build/packaging of XAP which makes it easier and more productive when building applications.  It is a free add-on to VS.  However, it is possible to build Silverlight applications using any text editor with the SDK.

Where can I download Silverlight Tools Beta 2 for Visual Studio 2008?

The easiest way to download the tools is to visit http://www.silverlight.net/