LiveSide - News blog : Silverlight

PDC 2009: Day 2 announcements

Sunshine — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 20:31:09 GMT

Now the liveblogging is over, let’s take a look at what was announced today.

Silverlight

A whole lot was said about Microsoft Silverlight, going through some features of Silverlight 3 but most of all of Silverlight 4! Yes, today at the PDC in Los Angeles, Scott Guthrie announced the availability of Silverlight 4 beta, just four months after bringing Silverlight 3 to market.

More information about Silverlight 4 is available at http://www.silverlight.net/getstarted/silverlight-4-beta/

Office 2010

Also announced today is the Office 2010 Beta (Professional Plus) availability. You can learn more about all the 2010 productivity apps at www.microsoft.com/2010 or go directly to the site for Office 2010 and download from there after filling in a little questionnaire (it’s meant for business customers, but hey ;) ). Included apps are Word, PowerPoint, Outlook, Excel, OneNote, Access, Publisher, InfoPath, SharePoint Workspace and Communicator.

Microsoft Office Mobile 2010 beta is available now too, you can download it through the Windows Mobile Marketplace for Windows Mobile 6.5 phones.

IE 9

Besides these announcements, Steve Sinofsky gave some details on the development of the next version of Microsoft's Web browser, Internet Explorer 9. IE9 will support DirectX and other standards, including CSS3 and HTML5. For some videos head on over to Channel 9.

Some more read of interest:
Microsoft Showcases Developer Opportunities for Windows and the Web
Microsoft Office 2010 Reaches Beta, Bringing Productivity Gains to the PC, Phone and Browser
Duet Enterprise for Microsoft SharePoint and SAP Extends Collaboration and Productivity
Digital Inspiration - What’s New Inside Microsoft Office 2010
Announcing the Outlook Social Connector

NBC Prepared For Winter Olympics, Adds Silverlight Player And Facebook Connect

Sunshine — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 10:40:17 GMT

Are you ready for the Winter Olympics? With the Olympics still 100 days away, NBC sure is. They made some changes to their site, NBCOlympics.com, for that.

Just as last year with the Summer Olympics there will be a Video Player based on Microsoft Silverlight which will deliver full HD videos. But that’s not all! This year the video player will have DVR-like functionality, with the ability to rewind the video, highlight clips and save them. How awesome is that? But wait, that’s still not all, the video player also incorporates Facebook Connect, so you can immediately share your favorite videos with your friends.

More share options are: Windows Live, Twitter, Digg, De.licio.us and Reddit.

As you may have noticed in the screenshot above, International users may be disappointed as due to Olympic broadcasting regulations, NBC is only allowed to show Olympic competition video on the internet to users in the United States and U.S. Territories (including Puerto Rico). Users outside of those locations will still have access to an extensive set of non-event video content on NBCOlympics.com though.

The site, according to TechCrunch, will also include Deep Zoom photo galleries and slideshows, so you can zoom in to every detail you’d like to see. I have yet to find out where those are, found pictures and slideshows yep, but zoomable ones…nope. Maybe that part hasn’t been updated yet? What I see sure differs from the screenshot at TechCrunch.

Also on site are Medal Counts, TV listings, headlines etc. etc. So yea, even without the competition vids there’s enough to see for international users too. Go on, have a look, the site went live today! Oohh, and ehh if you do find those zoomable pictures, let us know in the comments below.

Silverlight Streaming to be discontinued: new Azure service coming

Kip Kniskern — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 03:45:00 GMT

In a move that should surprise no one (in case you were wondering why we didn’t use Silverlight Streaming to host video after Soapbox closed), Silverlight Streaming, a Windows Live beta service for hosting Silverlight audio and video content, is being discontinued. A blog post today on the Silverlight Streaming blog (first post since March), summarizes the changes:

Microsoft Silverlight Streaming by Windows Live Beta is being discontinued and will eventually be taken down

A new Windows® Azure-based hosting and delivery service will be launched by the end of 2009, though this is not a direct replacement for Silverlight Streaming and will have costs associated with its use

You can access, retrieve and if desired remove your content that is currently hosted on Silverlight Streaming by following the instructions below

Key dates and information about the availability of the new Windows Azure functionality, and when the existing Silverlight Streaming beta service will be taken down, will be communicated in the coming weeks

More details on how to pull any content you may have off the service are detailed in the post.

We’re expecting to hear more about Live Services in general, and now this new Azure service in particular at PDC, which is only a month away now. Just for posterity, here’s the description of Silverlight Streaming from the website:

Microsoft® Silverlight™ Streaming by Windows Live™ is a companion service for Silverlight that makes it easier for developers and designers to deliver and scale rich media as part of their Silverlight applications. The service offers web designers and developers a free (*) and convenient solution for hosting and streaming cross-platform, cross-browser media experiences and rich interactive applications that run on Windows™ and Mac. Combined with the ability to create content with Microsoft® Expression and other 3rd party tools, web designers and content publishers wishing to integrate Silverlight applications into their online properties can enjoy complete control of the end user experience.

And yes we have some content to pull off SLS. Isn’t supporting Windows Live beta services fun?

Microsoft Silverlight 3 And Expression 3 Will Be Unveiled At A Virtual Launch Event On July 10, 2009

Sunshine — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 09:26:07 GMT

Even though Silverlight 3 and Expression Blend 3 + SketchFlow RC (not final), are already available for download since yesterday, Silverlight 3 and Expression 3 will be unveiled at a virtual launch event today!

Currently if you go to http://www.seethelight.com/ you will see a countdown timer, so it’s easy to determine when to come back for the virtual launch. This countdown timer can also be seen on the Expression site.

Silverlight 3 has quite a few new features and updates, check out this guide by Tim Heuer. Also note that a Silverlight 2 project opened in Blend 3 will ask to be automatically updated to Silverlight 3. This cannot be undone. Expression Encoder 3 will also be part of the Expression 3/Silverlight 3 launch. There are many exciting new features in this release – check out the detailed posting on the Expression Encoder Team Blog.

Michael Jackson In Silverlight

Sunshine — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 09:16:31 GMT

MSN UK has a whole page dedicated to the recently departed Michael Jackson. Who doesn’t know what he ment for music and dance? You can find just about anything about Michael Jackson on this tribute page. Most prominent is a Silverlight application featuring hundreds of photos of Michael Jackson, his life, his work, his fans and tributes to his career as King of Pop.

You can zoom in (using the scroll wheel of your mouse, by clicking or by using the navigation buttons) and drag around (hold mouse button and move) to look at all the separate photos, varying from Michael’s childhood to more recent ones. Just make sure you have installed the latest version of Silverlight. All photos in this Silverlight gallery © Press Association.

This sure is a nice way to remember Michael Jackson, may he Rest In Peace.

Source: Deep Zoom into MJ’s Life in Pictures | Sarah In Tampa | Channel 10

Cool Silverlight Uses – CMA And Photobucket

Sunshine — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 10:10:04 GMT

Some pretty cool Microsoft Silverlight uses emerged this week. The CMA came with a game called “Be This Close” and Photobucket released a Visual Search Tool that makes use of Silverlight and the Messenger Web Bar.

CMA, Be This Close Scavenger Hunt

The Country Music Association (CMA) and Microsoft teamed up at the CMA Music Festival in Nashville. Using Silverlight Deep Zoom, Microsoft and partner Firefly Logic built a rich and compelling user experience for CMA showcasing 850+ images of country music artists, highlighting past festivals, fan experiences and country music performances in a fun, game-oriented format called “Be This Close.”

You can check it out yourself at http://www.cmafest.com/bethisclose. The CMA will be promoting the Be This Close experience to radio stations around the country starting this week.

Photobucket Visual Search

Sarah reported that Photobucket, one of the world’s most popular photo-sharing websites, was preparing to release a new tool for finding photos on the site: a visual search engine. We can tell you now this tool has been released. Once you’ve done a search on the site you will see a link to visual search at the bottom right:

Once you click it, the Silverlight powered page with your search results will start to load.

If you place your cursor over a picture in the search results you can see that you can easily Search more like this or go to the authors library. Even more interesting is Enlarge & Share:

Not only can you browse through all the search results (by clicking arrows) but you can get everything you need to share it there too.

Whether you want to link people, embed it on your site, download the picture or….hey wait a minute, Share with Live? What does that do? Well, you might have noticed the Windows Live Messenger Web Bar at the bottom left. If you click Share with Live it will ask you to log in there. After you’ve logged in clicking Share with Live will result in your contact list popping up. Just choose the contact you wish to share this photo with and a link will be sent.

A link yes, it looks a lot like one of those SPIM messages you get, so make sure your contact knows it’s not (esp. if it’s the first message you send). Maybe in future this can be replaced by showing the picture in Messenger directly….

Windows Media Center Brings Netflix To Consumers Using Silverlight

Sunshine — Wed, 20 May 2009 10:31:21 GMT

Windows Media Center supports Microsoft Silverlight as of today! It starts by offering the Netflix Service on Windows Vista Home Premium or Ultimate. The following announcement appeared on the Silverlight Blog:

It’s official! As of today Silverlight is now supported within Windows Media Center. Microsoft just announced the immediate availability of the Netflix service on Windows Media Center for Windows Vista Home Premium or Ultimate. Under the hood, this is the same Silverlight-based service that users can get from www.netflix.com. To use it on Windows Media Center, you need to be a subscriber to Netflix and you need to have Silverlight installed on your PC. As shown below, a new Netflix tile now appears under TV + Movies in the Media Center UI.

On first use, you’ll be prompted to install Silverlight 2 if it’s not already on your machine.

For content providers like Netflix, Silverlight support in Windows Media Center means they can leverage most, if not all, of their previous Silverlight development work to reach a potential audience of some 180 million Media Center users, 13 million of whom spend about 90 minutes in Media Center per session. Technically, Silverlight just plugs into Windows Media Center the same way it plugs into a web browser, so it supports all the features of Silverlight. However, that doesn’t mean that any content provider can make their Silverlight application available in Windows Media Center.At this point Microsoft has only announced the addition of Netflix as a Silverlight-based provider, but we look forward to the Windows Media Center team adding more Silverlight-based content experiences in the future.

Really cool, no word about it on Windows 7 atm though*. But hey that hasn’t even hit RTM yet, surely once it does you will be able to enjoy the same on that. It sure is good to see Silverlight being used more and more, on the web and in the OS!

* The only thing Windows 7 the announcement mentioned is about a new EPG that integrates both TV programming and Internet content in Windows Media Center.

Update: more info and a demo can be found here

GeoSynth: Microsoft’s answer to Google Street View?

Kip Kniskern — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 16:22:00 GMT

Pocket-lint, the “largest independent gadget news and reviews site in the UK”, is reporting today that Microsoft plans to take on Google’s Street View with a “public-led” offering based on PhotoSynth technology and Silverlight to “allow users to upload geotagged images into a central database to help build detailed larger images of a given landmark” to be “connected into Microsoft's Virtual Earth service allowing you to get a "street view" of anywhere on the planet”, according to the post on Pocket-lint.

The yet-to-be-announced new technology is apparently awaiting Virtual Earth working with Silverlight, which was announced at Mix09 last week, and is set to go into beta this summer, with a full release later this year.

Pocket-lint talked to Johannes Kebeck, a Virtual Earth technology specialist at Microsoft EMEA about the project:

"The system would take the best images from a location to create a single image of a specific landmark very much in the same way Microsoft did with the Obama Inauguration", Johannes Kebeck a Virtual Earth technology specialist at Microsoft EMEA told us.
"We couldn't guarantee that all images would be used, but you could create a very good image of a given landmark like Piccadilly Circus for example from thousands of images".

While there have been sightings of Microsoft vehicles taking what appeared to be Street View type images, and at one point a technology preview of a Street View type product was released by Microsoft, up to this point there has been no indication of how Microsoft and Virtual Earth / Live Maps planned to answer Google’s popular Street View feature.

via FastCompany

MIX09: Silverlight 3 Beta, Tools And More…

Sunshine — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 20:57:16 GMT

More news from today’s keynote at MIX09:

Silverlight 3 Beta

Silverlight 3 Beta was unveiled at MIX09. This is a preview release which introduces more than 50 new features, including support for running Silverlight applications out of the browser, dramatic video performance and quality improvements.

New features in Silverlight 3 include:

Support for Higher Quality Video & Audio. With support for native H.264/Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) Audio, live and on-demand IIS7 Smooth Streaming, full HD (720p+) playback, and an extensible decoder pipeline, Silverlight 3 brings rich, full-screen, stutter-free media experiences to the desktop.
New and enhanced media features in Silverlight 3 include: Live and on-demand true HD (720p+) Smooth Streaming, more format choice. True HD playback in full-screen. Extensible media format support.Industry leading content protection.
Empowering Richer Experiences. Silverlight 3 contains new 3D graphics, animation features, hardware accelerated effects and text improvements that enable designers and developers to create next generation Web visuals.
Additional features include: Perspective 3D Graphics. Pixel Shader effects. Bitmap Caching. New Bitmap API.Themed application support. Animation Effects. Enhanced control skinning. Improved text rendering & font support.
Improving Rich Internet Application Productivity.
New features include: 60+ controls with source code. Deep Linking. Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Enhanced Data Support. Improved performance through: Application library caching, Enhanced Deep Zoom, Binary XML, Local Connection.
Advanced Accessibility Features. Silverlight 3 is the first browser plug-in to provide access to all system colors, allowing partially-sighted people to make changes such as high contrast color schemes for ease of readability by using familiar operating system controls.
Out of Browser Capabilities. The new out of browser experience in Silverlight 3 enables users to place their favorite Silverlight applications directly onto their PC and Mac, with links on the desktop and start menu—all without the need to download an additional runtime or browser plug-in. Further, the new experience enables Silverlight applications to work whether the computer is connected to the Internet or not—a radical improvement to the traditional Web experience.

Along with this beta release new tools got released too:

Silverlight 3 Beta Tools for Visual Studio – this will install the developer runtime of Silverlight 3 Beta, the Visual Studio project templates and the Silverlight 3 Beta SDK.
Silverlight 3 Beta developer runtimes: Windows or Mac. If you installed the tools above, you will get the developer runtime and there is no need to install it again. These downloads are being made available for test machines for the Windows and Mac platforms for your applications.
Microsoft Expression Blend 3 Preview – this is the preview version of Expression Blend that will enable authoring of Silverlight 3 Beta applications.
Silverlight Toolkit – the toolkit has been updated to provide an update to Silverlight 2 controls, a new release for Silverlight 3 Beta controls, and a new themes gallery. All of these can be downloaded at the Silverlight Toolkit CodePlex project site.
.NET RIA Services – Microsoft .NET RIA Services simplifies the traditional n-tier application pattern by bringing together the ASP.NET and Silverlight platforms. The RIA Services provides a pattern to write application logic that runs on the mid-tier and controls access to data for queries, changes and custom operations.
Silverlight 3 Beta Documentation – view documentation online or download an offline CHM help file.

Even more information can be found here and at the MIX09 session site.

Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio

Also announced at MIX09 today is the availability of Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio March 2009 CTP. Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio extend Visual Studio to enable the creation, building, debugging, running and packaging of scalable services on Windows Azure. Please note that this is a CTP release and should not be used on production systems.

Microsoft Expression Web SuperPreview

On the subject of web developing, another interesting tool got released by the Expression Web Team today: SuperPreview. This tool enables developers to see how their sites look in different browsers without the need of a VM. Not with all the browsers they showed in the keynote at MIX09 today, it’s limited to IE6 and IE versions already installed on your computer, but still a handy tool. It will install on Windows XP SP3, Windows Vista SP1, Windows 7, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008, be it that on Windows 7 you will not have IE6 in the browser list. The release expires on October 1, 2009. The full and final version of this product will be bundled together with Expression Web 3, sometime later this year and will run as a separate standalone application. Long Zheng has more detailed information and screenshots of this new tool.

PressPass - Microsoft Web Technologies Unveiled at MIX09 Help Businesses Deliver Return on Experience

P.S. Today’s keynote will be available on demand at http://live.visitmix.com/ later.

WorldWide Telescope Web Client now available – bringing the universe closer to everyone

damaster — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 14:09:37 GMT

As of today, WorldWide Telescope is no longer limited to the Windows operating system, as the an alpha version of the WorldWide Telescope Web Client was released – and it’s based on Silverlight 2.0! This means that you can now bring this virtual telescope to any platforms that supports Silverlight 2.0. Here’s a screenshot of the web client running in my browser:

Below is a list of features in the web client:

Access to hundreds of terabytes of sky, earth and planet data
Ability to navigate seamlessly through 3D spherical environments
Finder Scope to quickly identify astronomical objects
Instant thumbnail previews of tens of thousands of popular astronomical objects
Access to billions of objects in web-based astronomical catalogue
Loading tours, images and other WorldWide Telescope data files on local machine
Real-time positions of planets and moons
Move forwards and backwards in time 2000 years
View guided tours (without 3D planets)
Browsing local user collections
Virtual Observatory Cone search/registry look up and SIMBAD search

It is also said that the ability to change viewing location and a basic Solar System View are coming soon to the web client. It’s great to see Microsoft utilizing the capabilities of what Silverlight can do and brings its software cross-platform.

You can view the WorldWide Telescope Web Client (alpha) at http://www.worldwidetelescope.org/webclient

Don’t Miss Out On Cashback Offers With MSN Toolbar

Sunshine — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 23:36:15 GMT

Afraid to miss out on a Live Search Cashback offer? You won’t if you use the MSN Toolbar, which now contains a Cashback-offer-detecting mechanism. If there is Cashback available for the item you were searching for the icon on the toolbar will gleam. Clicking the gleam will bring you to the page where the Cashback offer is available. So you will never find yourself in a situation like this one:

“I bought a Wii online; and then found out the next day that I could have saved almost $100 had I used Live Search Cashback!! I was so mad.”

Best thing of it all is that it doesn’t matter where you search, be it on Live Search, Google, Yahoo or Craigslist.

This version of MSN Toolbar was released May last year and is powered by Microsoft Silverlight.

Live Search : Your everyday online cash detector
Previous articles on Live Search Cashback

Edit: Live Search Cashback is still only available for US residents, 18 years of age or older - FAQ

Flickr And SmugMug Users: Easily Create DeepZoom Albums With Mooncake [updated]

Sunshine — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 13:03:46 GMT

There already was PhotoZoom from mslivelabs (upload photos one by one or from an RSS or Atom feed) to create DeepZoom albums. Now Flickr and SmugMug users get their own easy way to create Silverlight DeepZoom albums. Felix Wang ~~created~~ introduces Mooncake, which was created specifically for this purpose:

I'm please to share a prototype of server side Deep Zoom generation, it's called codename Mooncake.

It can pull photos from flickr or other sites, generate an album up in the cloud automatically, and present it in a nice sleek viewer powered by Deep Zoom.

You can embed it in your web site or blog posts…

You can try it at http://mooncake.nxmix.com/

If you like it please register at http://beta.redmooncake.net

Thanks to Vasudev for this tip!

Update: Clarification from Felix Wang in his updated post:

I have to clarify one important fact that: I'm NOT the author of this project. Allan Li from http://nxmix.com/ created it, and we are working closely with Allan to move forward this project. My apologizes if my original post sounded like I created it. I like this project, and I'm really proud of Allan and this project.

Thanks Felix, article updated.

Felix Wang | Evangelizing the Next Web : Mooncake Anyone?
meraTechPort - Mooncake : Create Deep Zoom tile sets from your flickr streams
LiveSino - Mooncake - 利用 Flickr 等相册照片创建 Deep Zoom

How’s The Weather?

Sunshine — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 12:02:00 GMT

Chris Pendleton reports that Weather Central has just launched a new beta community site called ReportStorms.com. The site utilizes Silverlight and you can report storms in your area, and/or look at what the weather is like (or was like) wherever in the world on a Microsoft Virtual Earth map.

As you can see in the above screenshot, you can search for an address and filter the Storm Reports by date if you expand the Viewing Pane. You can also toggle type of reports on and off in the Legend, say you don’t want to see Flooding then you just click on it and it will disappear from the map.

To report an Event, right click the location on the map. After clicking Report you will be presented with the following balloon:

I’ve left this one empty to show you how it looks when you start out (look how it noticed location, it says dinsdag..which is Dutch for Tuesday). After Type there’s a dropdown menu which gives you the same options as shown in the Legend, besides Cluster of Events, which it will create itself should there be more events for that location. Depending on which you choose from the dropdown you get another field with dropdown below in which you can give some more details (Type of Tornado, size of the hail, what damage does the storm do, how severe is the flooding etc.). Last but not least you can also attach an image or movie to your report, the top ones will be displayed and are accessible in the Viewing Pane under View Top Images and Videos.

To complete it all you can fill in your profile (complete with location and an avatar) and go on the forums to talk weather with others. Tip from Chris:

Here’s a great introduction to meet someone on this site, “So, how’s the weather?”

Well Chris, it’s quite stormy here but there’s nothing about it on that new site…guess they really really need new members.

Want to give it a go? Head over to ReportStorms.com. You don’t need to register (free) to view the storm reports, but you do if you wish to submit reports.

To all IE8 beta 2 users: click the compatibility button to view this site as it’s intended.

HD View: ICE, Photoshop Plugin, And Hdmake Updates

Sunshine — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 22:10:00 GMT

Following the Deep Zoom Composer and the PhotoZoom website, ICE (Image Composite Editor) and the HD View Utilities (Photoshop Plugin and hdmake) have also been updated to work with Silverlight 2 now.

In addition to getting the latest Silverlight 2.0 goodness, this ICE release addresses several issues reported by our users:

- we now offer http download instead of ftp

- the crash on second use bug has been fixed

- the random drop of one image from the result is fixed

- the metadata issue that prevented geotiffs from loading is fixed

And that’s not all! Programmers take note of the following:

Also due to popular demand we are releasing the source code for HD View SL, the Silverlight based viewer that is output by ICE and by the Photoshop Plugin. As this name indicates we are gradually migrating HD View, a Windows only browser plugin, to HD View SL, a cross-platform Silverlight Rich Internet Application. There are still some significant differences between HD View and HD View SL but we are confident that these differences will gradually disappear. For a detailed comparison of the two technologies please see the HD View SL CodePlex page.

If you are interested in Silverlight programming I encourage you to download the source and start making customizations to the viewer. Some customizations that I would love to see are different navigation UI, auto-scroll of the view, and keyboard short-cuts.

Go get your updates today!

Download ICE
Download HD View Utilities

HD View Live Space
ICE Forums
HD View Photoshop Plugin and hdmake tool
ICE Released

Microsoft Releases Silverlight 2 On Tuesday, Oct. 14

Sunshine — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 19:04:00 GMT

Microsoft will release Silverlight 2 tomorrow. Microsoft Silverlight is a cross-browser, cross-platform, and cross-device plug-in for delivering the next generation of .NET based media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web.

New features include:

•.NET Framework support with a rich base class library. This is a compatible subset of the full .NET Framework.
• Powerful built-in controls. These include DataGrid, ListBox, Slider, ScrollViewer, Calendar controls and more.
• Advanced skinning and templating support. This makes it easy to customize the look and feel of an application.
• Deep zoom. This enables unparalleled interactivity and navigation of ultrahigh resolution imagery.
• Comprehensive networking support. Out-of-the-box support allows calling REST, WS*/SOAP, POX, RSS and standard HTTP services, enabling users to create applications that easily integrate with existing back-end systems.
• Expanded .NET Framework language support. Unlike other runtimes, Silverlight 2 supports a variety of programming languages, including Visual Basic, C#, JavaScript, IronPython and IronRuby, making it easier for developers already familiar with one of these languages to repurpose their existing skill sets.
• Advanced content protection. This now includes Silverlight DRM, powered by PlayReady, offering robust content protection for connected Silverlight experiences.
• Improved server scalability and expanded advertiser support. This includes new streaming and progressive download capabilities, superior search engine optimization techniques, and next-generation in-stream advertising support.
• Vibrant partner ecosystem. Visual Studio Industry Partners such as ComponentOne LLC, Infragistics Inc. and Telerik Inc. are providing products that further enhance developer capabilities when creating Silverlight applications using Visual Studio.
• Cross-platform and cross-browser support. This includes support for Mac, Windows and Linux in Firefox, Safari and Windows Internet Explorer.

For more information and details about Silverlight 2, read the Silverlight 2 fact sheet available here. You'll also find the Teleconference with Scott Guthrie there.

Microsoft also will release the Silverlight Control Pack and publish on MSDN the technical specification for the Silverlight Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML) vocabulary. The SCP, which will augment the powerful built-in control set in Silverlight, will be released under the Microsoft Permissive License, an Open Source Initiative-approved license.

And that’s not all:

Microsoft announced plans to support additional tools for developing Silverlight applications by providing funding to Soyatec, a France-based IT solutions provider and Eclipse Foundation member, to lead a project to integrate advanced Silverlight development capabilities into the Eclipse IDE. Soyatec plans to release the project under the Eclipse Public License Version 1.0 on SourceForge and submit it to the Eclipse Foundation as an open Eclipse project.

A technology preview of the Soyatec project is available today at http://www.eclipse4sl.org, with a complete version available in second half of 2009.

Beyond funding development in the free Eclipse IDE, Microsoft currently delivers state-of-the-art tools for Silverlight with Visual Studio 2008 and Expression Studio 2. In addition, support is now extended to Visual Web Developer 2008 Express Edition, which is a free download.

Silverlight 2 will be available for download on Tuesday, Oct. 14, at http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight. If you already have a previous version installed you will be automatically upgraded to Silverlight 2.

Press Release