Scott Hanselman

Silverlight 2 is out!

October 14, 2008 Comment on this post [16] Posted in ASP.NET | ASP.NET Dynamic Data | ASP.NET MVC | PDC | Silverlight
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Bam. Silverlight 2 is out. There's the expected stuff, like the final SDK, Expression, and Silverlight tools:

And from Tim's blog:

And from ScottGu's blog, the Epic GuPost. But there's also http://www.eclipse4sl.org/. Yes, that means you can code Silverlight in Eclipse. Details and progress at the Eclipse Tools for Silverlight Blog. It'll be licensed under the EPL 1.0 License.

Love the free tools. You can also code Silverlight with the free Visual Web Developer Express, so you don't need to pay for a working development environment to try out Silverlight.

There's a bunch of new stuff in this, the Release of Silverlight 2. Check out Tim Heuer's blog for lots of good details on Controls, ADO.NET Data Services, Text Rendering improvements, and more. Also, there are (and will be more) videos, screencasts, samples and demos at my team's site at http://www.silverlight.net, so check it out.

Also, be watching the Silverlight Dynamic Languages SDK and CodePlex Site as I hope they'll update their stuff to the release of Silverlight very soon. It's fun to write IronRuby and have it running in a browser.

The Dynamic Languages SDK contains support for writing Ruby, Python, and JScript applications in the browser. However, since this project provides a bridge between Silverlightâ„¢ and the Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR), any language running on the DLR will be enabled to build Silverlight applications.

Also, if you're going to be at PDC, please come to my talk and see what Grant Archibald and I have been working on.

Microsoft .NET Framework: Overview and Applications for Babies

Join Scott Hanselman for this lots-of-code-minimal slides talk that walks through the sheer joy of building out a .NET Framework application with Visual Studio using many of the new advances in the .NET Framework 3.5SP1 and 4.0. We have a data layer with Entity Framework, use REST web services with WCF and ADO.NET Data Services, write an ASP.NET site for reporting using Dynamic Data and MVC. All the data will come from a WPF client application and a Silverlight application that the audience will run live! All this, plus it's an application that babies and toddlers will love!

Have fun!

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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October 14, 2008 14:08
All I can say is Thank you so much.
October 14, 2008 14:18
Very cool!
I've been waiting for quite some time to justify trying out silverlight. Now that it's released it will be a much easier sell to management..

thanks scott (ha and gu)! Silverlight, MVC, LinQ.. .NET programming has become so much more fun over the last years.
October 14, 2008 14:34
Very excited about the official ADO.NET Data Services support....

Persistence -> IQueryable -> REST -> Silverlight Shiny UI in 10 mins? ;)

Looking forward to your talk too. Just gotta see about getting me a baby. Can you rent children in LA?

October 14, 2008 14:45
By the way there's a font size problem on this comment system. Well what I wanted to say is Expression Blend 2 $714 CND ??? Man, this very expensive for my wallet. Is there something for developers at home ?
October 14, 2008 15:56
Let the games begin.. .Thanks for the info!
October 14, 2008 16:57
Anyone else notice that the download for the Silverlight Tools for Visual Studio 2008 SP1 says its "RC1"?? I'm a little confused. Is this the final release or just another release candidate? Is the link wrong?
October 14, 2008 17:05
I think the download link is correct, just named wrong because if you look at the date, it says 10/13/2008. Microsoft really needs to work on less confusing measures for upgrades from beta/release candidates and stop announcing things that are just untrue. They have been saying all along that if we got RC0 tools Silverlight would be upgraded automatically. Now ScottGu is saying we have to uninstall and re-install. Which is it?

I tried many different official Silverlight 2 apps and my Silverlight would not upgrade. Also, it would help if they announced the version of the release Silverlight 2 so we can tell from the Silverlight Configuration whether it is upgraded or not.

It is just a huge pain whenever there is a transition between beta/rc Microsoft stuff to release because of the poor information, regardless of the product.
Ted
October 14, 2008 18:21
Awesome! Huge congratulations to the whole team! A few quick questions/concerns:
- Lack of printing and camera support?
- Is Mac performance still a problem?
- How will it be distributed?

That's the short version, there's also a long version. Again, congratulations - this is HUGE!
October 14, 2008 18:44
Yeah, I noticed the RC1 as well, but the release date says October 13th. I guess it's OK then.
October 14, 2008 19:52
I'm looking for a way to mash Silverlight 2.0 [form controls] together with ASP.NET MVC where Silverlight is strictly a view technology interacting with controllers and models.

If anyone has ideas about this I'd appreciate it. Doing it with Adobe Flex is pretty easy, but I'd like to leverage Silverlight instead.
October 14, 2008 21:52
Thanks !!! i Love it.
October 15, 2008 5:22
How will we make our Silverlight sites discoverable by search engines?
October 15, 2008 8:36
it is good news but i concern about something.can silverlight satisfy the needs which some designers satisfy it with flash or it is superior or equivalent to it?
October 19, 2008 14:56
At last. We have created with Silverlight an entire virtual world for kids and it works great. Been waiting for the official release and happy it is out.
October 19, 2008 14:56
At last. We have created with Silverlight an entire virtual world for kids and it works great. Been waiting for the official release and happy it is out.
October 22, 2008 19:37
The performance of Silverlight 2.0 seems much better than the beta versions.

I made a little toy called MarbleFall using Jeff Weber's Farseer Physics library and some help from Andy Beaulieu's Silverlight samples.

I can see Silverlight beating Flash in the long run. ActionScript doesn't hold a candle to C#.

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Disclaimer: The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in any way.