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Sunday, February 24, 2008

Microsoft Readies Silverlight 2 Beta

Microsoft's Scott Guthrie, general manager in the Microsoft Developer
Division, has provided a list of features planned for Silverlight 2 and
the beta, planned for release during the first quarter of 2008.
Silverlight 2 will be a major update of Silverlight that focuses on
enabling Rich Internet Application (RIA) development. Silverlight 2
includes a cross-platform, cross-browser version of the .NET Framework,
and enables a rich .NET development platform that runs in the browser.
Once Silverlight 2 is installed, you can browse the Web and automatically
run rich Silverlight applications within your browser of choice; thus
includes such browsers as Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, and others.
For networking, Silverlight 2 backs REST (Representational State Transfer),
WS-*, and SOAP as well RSS, POX, and HTTP services. Cross-domain network
access in Silverlight 2 enables Silverlight clients to directly access
resources and data from resources on the Web. Built-in sockets networking
also is included in the beta release. Silverlight 2 features a rich .Net
base class library of functionality, such as collections, generics
threading, globalization, XML, and local storage. Rich APIs in the
product enable HTML DOM/JavaScript integration with .Net code Also featured
is Microsoft's LINQ (Language Integrated Query) technology, which provides
native query syntax for C# and Visual Basic, and LINQ to XML library
support. This enables easy transformation and querying of data; local
data caching and storage support are highlighted as well in Silverlight 2.
Developers can write Silverlight applications using a .Net language, such
as Visual Basic, C#, JavaScript, IronPython, or IronRuby. Microsoft plans
to ship support for developer/designer workflow and integration for
Silverlight in its Visual Studio 2008 and Expression Studio tools.

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