Shortly after Silverlight 2 was out for development pleasures, we asked for a lot of things from Silverlight team. I myself asked for several features that I thought were most needed for killer applications. Hundreds of Silverlight developers joined in and wished for a trillion of features more. Then I was highly doubt that Silverlight team would deliver all of those, because it was like a million children sending wish letters to Santa Claus. And guess what, they have done it! They have delivered most of the requested features and then some right in Silverlight 3 Beta which is now available for download.

What’s New in Silverlight 3? More controls, support for more media codecs, perspective 3D, pixel shader APIs, animation effects, GPU 3D acceleration, text improvements, element-to-element binding, LocalConnection API, SaveFileDialog, assembly caching, network monitoring API, out-of-browser detachment, standalone desktop application, .NET RIA services, binary XML and additional features, too many to list them all in one post. I'm going to write more detail samples and demos in the upcoming days. Meanwhile, Tim Heuer has more in his blog post A guide to Silverlight 3 new features.

Downloads

Silverlight 3 Beta Tools for Visual Studio - Includes everything from SDK, project templates to developer runtime for Visual Studio user.
Silverlight 3 Beta Developer Runtimes - Windows or Mac.
Silverlight Toolkit - Extra controls.
Microsoft Expression Blend 3 Preview
Silverlight 3 Beta Documentations - Online or Offline (CHM File).

In collaboration with Microsoft, Novell today released the version 1.0 of Moonlight for major Linux distros including openSUSE, SUSE Linux Enterprise, Fedora, Red Hat, Ubuntu, and likely other distros as well. With Moonlight 1.0 plugin installed in Firefox, Linux users can now run Silverlight 1.0 applications without a fuss. Miguel de Icaza, Novell's Vice President of Developer Platform, said in a blog post that his team was working hard to roll out the next version of Moonlight which will be able to run Silverlight 2.0 applications. Moonlight 2.0 is right around the corner, as the current pre-Alpha build of Moonlight 2.0 can already run some Silverlight 2.0 demo applications.

I think we are witnessing a major breakthrough today, as Silverlight is becoming a true cross-platform. Does it matter? Yes, it does. We will just develop our Silverlight application once, it will run anywhere whether it is on the web, mobile or desktop; whether the operating system is Windows, Mac, Linux, or Symbian.

For Linux users, you can download Moonlight plug-in for your browser at http://www.go-mono.com/moonlight/

This is not going to be funny for those readers who have got fired lately. Fifty tech specialists likely Flash's at Netflix are expected to be let go in January 2009. It's not about the world's economy. It's about Silverlight. Here is what Steve Swasey, Netflix VP of corporate communications, has to say:

"For those of you who watch movies instantly on your PC or Mac, you may have noticed our player is much easier to install and use now with Silverlight. The good news is fewer problems for you. The bad news is that we are now overstaffed with technical specialists in our Customer Service (CS) group."

"The tech support folks have been underutilized. They’re specialists and the calls are able to be managed by our main Customer Service group, which continues to grow. In January we will add at least as many people to the main CS group as we’re letting go from the tech group."

This is a chilling message for Flash folks. Either they have to adapt or be unemployed.

To be released next year, Silverlight 3 will get major improvements in media and graphics. It is going to get 3D support and GPU hardware acceleration. 3D games and applications will simply run on the web, how cool is that? Maybe, just maybe, Web 3.0 would go three dimensions in mainstream because of Silverlight. Liden Lab would create Second Life Web Edition using Silverlight. Or maybe I'm letting my imagination run wild with all these web-based 3D social networking and web browsing.

Besides 3D, Silverlight is going to play H.264 video and include a zillion of new controls. But this is not it. It is still too early to tell whether Silverlight 3 will come with a free lunch or not. Scott Guthrie hinted that Silverlight team has surprises in store for you. So stay tuned.

Scott Guthrie breaks the silence today with an update on Silverlight download statistics. Silverlight 2 runtime has been downloaded over 100 million times in only four weeks! That translates roughly into one in four computers on the internet. This number should put a big smile on every Silverlight developer. I mean, what is better than that?

The adoption of Silverlight 2 is strong. TV stations around the world, to name a few, FranceTV, NOS, Sportbox.ru and RAI, are switching from Flash to Silverlight to take advantages of Silverlight video streaming and its lower CTO. America Online recently launched AOL Mail using Silverlight 2. Even Blockbuster and Netflix are rolling out their own Silverlight video players possibly to replace Flash. Who wouldn't use Silverlight when it can save thousands of dollars on streaming?

I have been eagerly waiting for the final release of Silverlight 2. And now it is here before the schedule. Kudos to Silverlight team.

There are a few things on my wish list that are not yet here though:

1. Unrestricted outbound socket communication, where the policy file is not needed, and port range extended to cover FTP, SMTP, POP and other important ports. This will allow developers to create serious Silverlight applications and to beat Flash hand downs.
2. Bitmap drawing and rendering, so that we can develop face recognition, photo editing, and other drawing-related software. Our developers desperately need this to create a Logo and Button Generator in Silverlight. Some customers want to get some cool effects off Bitmap Pixel Shading too.
3. Non-blurry text. It is quite distracting to read text in Silverlight application, since it's all blurry. The anti-aliasing is too much. The problem is rooted down to WPF, more specifically in the way it renders text to favor positioning accuracy over legibility. More info
4. Support for Khmer language. This is a bit personal, since I'm a Cambodian and would like to see some progress for Cambodia IT, as it is stuck between the incompatibilities and supports. Unicode has finalized the Khmer characters standard years ago, and Vista has officially supported it. But .NET, WPF and Silverlight don't render Khmer text correctly, as these technologies don't go well with the Microsoft Uniscribe Engine and GDI+. More info

Hopefully these things got off my wish list some day (by actual implementations). Anyhow, today is a milestone for Silverlight. The web landscape will be changed forever.

Silverlight team has made it finally. Silverlight 2, SDK and runtimes are now available for download.

Silverlight Tools for Visual Studio 2008

Silverlight 2 Developer Runtime (Windows)

Silverlight 2 Developer Runtime (Mac)

Silverlight 2 SDK offline documentation (CHM)

Expression Blend 2 SP1  

Here is the full press release from Microsoft:

Microsoft has just released the Silverlight 2.0 RC0. Unlike the Beta 2 release, Release Candidate 0 is intended for developers only. It could be used to ensure that current Beta 2 applications will be compatible with Silverlight 2 full version. Accoding to Scott Guthrie, a ship load of bugs have been fixed, blocks of code have been heavily optimized for performance, yet it also manages to cramp three more controls as bonus: ComboBox, ProgressBar and PasswordBox. More new controls, including TreeView , are expected to come out within the next few months.

Here are some important links:

Microsoft® Silverlight™ Tools for Visual Studio 2008 SP1 (RC0)

Microsoft Expression Blend 2 SP1 RC Preview

Breaking Changes Since Beta 2

Note that you'll need to uninstall previous Silverlight tools and runtimes in prior to installing new tools.

Finally Silverlight Beta 2 is released with lots of improvements and new features, yet the runtime setup file is about 4.6 MB with core controls included! Amazing! If you're using Visual Studio 2008, download the Microsoft Silverlight Tools Beta 2 For VS 2008. This package includes everything from SDK, runtime, to VS 2008 projects and add-ins. Expression Blend 2.5 June Preview is also available for download today. It's a must have for designing the UI.

Noticely the web client and socket have the support for cross domain networking. Though it still requires the annoying XML policy file that must be explicitly created on the target servers before the magic happens. Scott Guthrie has more about the new features.

If you read my recent article "How to Get Files From Resources in Silverlight 2.0", you'll see that loading a file embedded as resource takes only a few lines of code. You also have to remember the formats of the URI. Well, that is going to change today, because now you'll need to write just a single line of developer-friendly code.More...

Questions like "How to load an embedded bitmap programmatically?" appear in Silverlight.net forum every single day, and some people actually think it is impossible to do such thing in Silverlight 2.0. Well, the truth is that not only is it possible but it is also damn easy.More...

I think the competition in Silverlight Controls market will be fierce. Just under a few months, developers have created a handful of UI controls for Silverlight 2.0 already. Well, some like VectorLight provides it for free with full source code (maybe for now?). The VectorLight's controls set include Calendar, Dropdown List, Fieldset, ListBox, Textbox, TextArea, Tree View, Progress Bar, and Text Label.

VectorLight Controls Demo 

As expected, Silverlight 2.0 Beta 1 was released hours ago, and it comes with Socket Networking support. Silverlight applications can now make direct/persistent connections to remote server. There are however some restrictions:

• Supports only TCP.
  
• Connect to only site or host of origin. (Temporary restriction until future release of Silverlight 2.0)
• Connect to only port range of 4502-4532.

Like I told you guys over the past few weeks, Silverlight 2.0 Beta 1 was to be released on March 05. Yes, confirmed! Silverlight 2.0 Beta 1.0 run-time binaries, SDK, source code and documentation are now available for download. Thanks to coolio for his compilation of links.

If you're developing Silverlight applications in Visual Studio 2008, you should download Silverlight Tools Beta 1 for VS2008 and Expression Blend 2.5 March Preview.

Microsoft Silverlight Tools Beta 1 for Visual Studio 2008 (This package contains VS2008 add-on, run-time binaries,  SDK, documentation and samples)
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=e0bae58e-9c0b-4090-a1db-f134d9f095fd&DisplayLang=en

Expression Blend 2.5 March Preview:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=32a3e916-e681-4955-bc9f-cfba49273c7c&DisplayLang=en 

SDK:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=4e03409a-77f3-413f-b108-1243c243c4fe&DisplayLang=en

Silverlight 2 Beta 1 runtime for Windows:
http://silverlight.dlservice.microsoft.com/download/6/6/3/663404e9-990d-4b74-873c-c4611aea2133/Silverlight.2.0.exe

Silverlight 2 Beta 1 runtime for Mac OS X:
http://www.microsoft.com/Silverlight/handlers/getSilverlight.ashx?v=2.0&targetplatform=macintel

Controls Source Code:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=ea93dd89-3af2-4acb-9cf4-bfe01b3f02d4&DisplayLang=en

Documentation:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=1840cab5-196c-4264-b55d-562242a72625&DisplayLang=en  

Online documentation:
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb404700.aspx 

Notes

Silverlight 2.0 Beta 1 is not compatible with Silverlight 1.1. Therefore, you might have to uninstall the following components first before installing that of Silverlight 2.0 Beta 1:

• Previous version of Silverlight runtime.
• Previous version of Silverlight SDK.
• Previous version of Silverlight Tools for Visual Studio.
  
• Visual Studio Update KB949325
  

Enjoys!

Scott Guthrie just blogged about the Expression Blend 2.5 March Preview minutes ago. Expression Blend 2.5, which adds support for new Silverlight controls, is to be released as a free preview at the same time Silverlight 2 Beta 1 goes public. You should take a take look at his blog post for details.

In case you missed the recent Scott Guthrie's blog post on Silverlight 2.0, there are going to be some cool developments in Silverlight 2.0 Beta1, which is to be released before March 05 2008. I like the fact that direct socket networking is supported. Better yet, cross-domain access is also supported. These two features alone will allow Silverlight developers to create rich Client-Server applications. Basically, a Silverlight 2.0 application will get the privileges of what a desktop application has, in terms of networking. Creating live chatting application in Silverlight is now possible, so are stock trading terminal, remote desktop client, multi-player game, grid computing client,  FTP client, streaming real-time chart, etc. With the help of new 'local storage' support, creating a full-featured BitTorrent P2P client might be a reality. And yes, those new built-in controls will help us create UI applications much quicker. Isn't this super exciting? 

Scott mentioned many other things:More...

On January 17 2008, Scott Guthrie announced the availability of .NET Framework Source Code under read-only reference for debugging purposes. That was great news indeed for .NET developers especially for those who had used .NET Reflector. This will solve a lot of debugging mysteries behind the "[External Code]" in the call stack. But hold on a sec, there is greater news for Silverlight developers, the source code of Silverlight libraries will be available as well according to his reply to our comment. I asked him if Silverlight source code could be opened. "Yes - we'll be releasing the source and enabling debugging for the Silverlight libraries as well once they ship." he replied. Although his reply is not an official announcement, it significantly leverages the possibility of having Silverlight source released.More...

Silverlight 2.0 Alpha introduced OpenFileDialog control which allows Silverlight applications to open and read *local* files outside Isolated Storage. It's better than the HTML <input> tag which is widely used for uploading files in web page. Well, like HTML <input>, OpenFileDialog could be used to build a file uploader quickly. Both must prompt user to select files. But unlike HTML <input>, OpenFileDialog control could be used to read and process the file data locally in Silverlight application. This is pretty powerful since Silverlight application will not need to upload the files to server for processing. What's more is that OpenFileDialog allows user to select multiple files at once. No need to create multiple instances of OpenFileDialog for that. Let's see some examples:More...

So you wanted the root canvas to scale proportionately to the host element to achieve fluid layout, and you tried setting Width=”100%” or Height=”50%”, but then horror struck because of this parser error: “Invalid attribute value 100% for property Width/Height”.  Ok, to tell you the truth you cannot set “%” to the Width and Height properties because the % is not accepted. Read on for the solution.

The BrowserHost instance has the Resize() event which fires every time the host element is resized and the ActualWidth/ActualHeight properties which tells the dimension of the host element. So, to automatically resize the root canvas, handles the BrowserHost.Resize() event, and from there you can resize the canvas. Let’s sum it up with VB.NET and C# code:More...