Next Silverlight 2.0 beta to appear this week
Developers going home from TechEd 2008 in Orlando (just as the admin folks arrive for the following week's demos) could find a delightful surprise in their annual tote bags: the newest plug-in for Visual Studio.
A very brief notice appearing on the blog of Microsoft .NET developer evangelist G. Andrew Duthie early this morning confirmed news coming from Tech·Ed 2008 for Developers in Orlando: The company's corporate vice president S. Somasegar told attendees that he expects the next beta of Silverlight 2.0, the company's portable graphics platform, before the end of this week.
Though no further details were provided about the beta itself, developers expect to be able to be able to more reliably test the 2.0 edition's key enhancements -- most notably, the capability to program for the Silverlight platform using any .NET language through Visual Studio 2008. Currently, Silverlight 1.0 prefers a Web browser-centric JavaScript programming model.
Ever since the first Silverlight public betas were produced by Microsoft, there have been two actively tested versions, the second of which -- originally numbered 1.1 -- was to include full .NET support for languages such as C#. But the feature set for that second version has persistently grown, to the point where version 2.0 (as it was rechristened last November) is expected to be competitive on all fronts against Adobe's Flash platform.
Among the enhancements added to Microsoft's list has been a feature called isolated storage, which promises to enable distributed Web applications to be able to store caches of data locally on a client without having to disturb the client's local file system (a typical point of exploitation), and without having to resort to using cookies. This would help shift the balance in current Silverlight programs, moving more of the logic to the client side and giving more reason for developers to want to try using different higher-level languages.
Another feature that's a little cloudier at present, though just as intriguing, is a possible low-profile extension called Dynamic Silverlight (DSL), reportedly capable of running from a command line and consuming under one megabyte. That low-profile extension could produce some retroactive "Silverlight-enabling," if you will, of applications other than those deployed over the Web that simply need access to Windows Presentation Foundation's richer set of controls.
The experience that is Tech·Ed in Orlando has acquired a curious new European-style dot (·) between its syllables, and has also been stretched out to two weeks, the first being devoted to developer-oriented news.
2:25 pm EDT June 3, 2008 - Multiple MSDN blogs are now confirming the news of the Silverlight 2.0 beta's release this week, and are officially calling it "Beta 2" (although this is actually far from the product's second beta).
One post from British Microsoft developer Paulo Barone cautions developers that some code developed for Beta 1 will break under Beta 2. A list of suggested workarounds is expected to be posted to the Silverlight Web site, once Beta 2 itself becomes available.