Silverlight 2 drops!

Scott Guthrie has just announced that Silverlight 2 final will be available for download from tomorrow.

According to Microsoft, Silverlight has already been downloaded by 1 in four consumers worldwide which is a significant amount. Expect all of these installs to update to the latest version sometime over the next week.

This is a significant event as it not only marks a huge milestone for the Microsoft Silverlight Team, but it also marks the date that Flash finally got a true competitor after years of complete domination. While Silverlight 1.0 was released last year, it was mainly a video only version, with some JavaScript/AJAX support that lacked the true power of .net. With the release of Silverlight 2, Microsoft has introduced a cross-platform, cross-browser version of the .NET Framework.

Silverlight 2 allows web developers to create applications using any of the programming languages that are available in Visual Studio, including C#, VB.net, JavaScript, IronPython, and IronRuby.

Microsoft also announced a few other little tidbits of information not previously announced.  First up was backing from Microsoft for SoyaTec towards Eclipse plugin development for Silverlight, significant if you’re not traditionally a .NET developer or don’t want to buy Visual Studio. More information on this is available here.

Secondly, Microsoft are opening up the Silverlight / XAML vocabulary to help third party developer write tools for building Silverlight applications.

Lastly, Microsoft have developed a Silverlight control pack, containing loads of Silverlight controls ready for use.  Additionally, this is being released on the Microsoft permissive license on Codeplex, making it free and distributable.  This will be developed over time so expect some interesting things coming here.

We are exceptionally excited about Silverlight 2 here at Monochrome, so expect to see us posting a lot more information over the coming weeks.

Posted by Neil Middleton on 13 Oct 2008