Category Archives: News

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Silverlight Version 2 RC0 Released

Good news for the Silverlight fans – the first Silverlight release candidate is released. Note that this is not the final runtime, it is developer only. It is released to let developers get into the changes and reform their Silverlight beta 2 applications. There are some breaking changes between Beta2 and this RC. You can take a look at this great article for most of them. As such, you can only use the RC for development right now – you can’t go live with the new APIs until the final release is shipped (which will be soon though).

You can download today’s Silverlight Release Candidate and accompanying VS and Blend support for it here.  Note that Expression Blend support for Silverlight 2 is now provided using Blend 2.0 SP1.  You will need to install Blend 2.0 before applying the SP1 service pack that adds Silverlight 2 support.  If you don’t already have Blend 2.0 installed you can download a free trial of it here. Continue Reading…

Won the First Prize!

Silverlight 2 ContestAs I created my latest Silverlight 2 game I read about the contest “Write and Win”, organized by Michael Sync and sponsored by SilverlightShow.net and Steven Hong. I decided to write a simple article, describing the whole process of creating my game: what kind of problems I have encountered, how I have solved them, what techniques I have used, etc.

The contest was closed on 25.07.2008 and then the voting began. It has been two days of voting when on 27.07.2008 the contest was finally over! I was very surprised when Michael Sync published the final results – I won the first prize! I am very happy that people liked my article and voted for me! I am a great fan of Silverlight and I like this way of attracting users to try it. Continue Reading…

Silverlight 2 Beta 2

Beta 2 is coming this week! Pete Brown wrote a short overview of what will this beta contain. Here it is.

  • Cross-domain changes to Sockets
  • WCF Duplex Communications
  • TextWrapping in textbox
  • TabControl
  • Updates to Improve WPF Compatibility

Along with Silverlight 2 Beta 2, you’ll find a new preview of Expression Blend 2.5 and a new version of Deep Zoom Composer.

Silverlight 2.0 beta 1 Available

SilverlightIn MIX Conference 2008 Microsoft presented Silverlight 2.0 beta 1. Here is a list of new features in this release:

  • WPF UI Framework
    Silverlight 2 includes a rich WPF-based UI framework that makes building rich Web applications much easier. In includes a powerful graphics and animation engine, as well as rich support for higher-level UI capabilities like controls, layout management, data-binding, styles, and template skinning. The WPF UI Framework in Silverlight is a compatible subset of the WPF UI Framework features in the full .NET Framework, and enables developers to re-use skills, controls, code and content to build both rich cross browser web applications, as well as rich desktop Windows applications.
  • Rich Controls
    Silverlight 2 includes a rich set of built-in controls that developers and designers can use to quickly build applications. This upcoming Beta1 release includes core form controls (TextBox, CheckBox, RadioButton, etc), built-in layout management panels (StackPanel, Grid, Panel, etc), common functionality controls (Slider, ScrollViewer, Calendar, DatePicker, etc), and data manipulation controls (DataGrid, ListBox, etc). The built-in controls support a rich control templating model, which enables developers and designers to collaborate together to build highly polished solutions.
  • Rich Networking Support
    Silverlight 2 includes rich networking support. It includes out of the box support for calling REST, WS*/SOAP, POX, RSS, and standard HTTP services. It supports cross domain network access (enabling Silverlight clients to directly access resources and data from resources on the web). Beta1 also includes built-in sockets networking support.
  • Rich Base Class Library
    Silverlight 2 includes a rich .NET base class library of functionality (collections, IO, generics, threading, globalization, XML, local storage, etc). It includes rich APIs that enable HTML DOM/JavaScript integration with .NET code. It also includes LINQ and LINQ to XML library support (enabling easy transformation and querying of data), as well as local data caching and storage support. The .NET APIs in Silverlight are a compatible subset of the full .NET Framework.

The SDK for Silverlight 2.0 beta 1 is already available at its website.

Hello World!

Well, this is my first post! I hope I am going to write here on a regular base. If you want to learn more about the general idea of this blog, you can visit the About page.

Have fun! 🙂