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.

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...

Folks, the Olympics 2008 Games in Beijing, China is coming soon on 08/08/08. Sports aside, the most exciting news to me is in fact the deal between Microsoft and NBC to broadcast the Olympics games over the web via Silverlight 2.0. Over 3000 hours of live and on-demand videos will be available exclusively to anyone with Silverlight 2.0 plug-in installed. In layman's terms, you can watch every second of all the games if you have Silverlight 2.0. For more details, read the blog post by Soma Segar, corporate vice president of the Microsoft Developer Division.

Now let's talk business. Thousands if not millions of people will download and install Silverlight 2.0 plugin. This will definitely bring the "98% of web users can run Flash Silverlight applications" closer to reality. We Silverlight developers would be able to deploy our Java Silverlight applications worry-free over the web, because 98% of all web users could use them right away. And Microsoft might not have to deal with antitrust lawsuits, because they wouldn't need to distribute Silverlight in the automatic Windows Update.

I'll definitely keep an eye on NBCOlympics.com for videos of the Olympics.