First Look at Silverlight 2

Last September we shipped Silverlight 1.0 for Mac and Windows, and announced our plans to deliver Silverlight on Linux.  Silverlight 1.0 focused on enabling rich media scenarios in a browser, and supports a JavaScript/AJAX programming model.

We are shortly going to release the first public beta of Silverlight 2, which will be a major update of Silverlight that focuses on enabling Rich Internet Application (RIA) development.  This is the first of several blog posts I'll be doing over the weeks and months ahead that talk in more depth about it.

Cross Platform / Cross Browser .NET 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.  Developers can write Silverlight applications using any .NET language (including VB, C#, JavaScript, IronPython and IronRuby).  We will ship Visual Studio 2008 and Expression Studio tool support that enables great developer / designer workflow and integration when building Silverlight applications.

This upcoming Beta1 release of Silverlight 2 provides a rich set of features for RIA application development.  These include:

  • WPF UI Framework: Silverlight 2 includes a rich WPF-based UI framework that makes building rich Web applications much easier.  In includes a powerful graphics and animation engine, as well as rich support for higher-level UI capabilities like controls, layout management, data-binding, styles, and template skinning.  The WPF UI Framework in Silverlight is a compatible subset of the WPF UI Framework features in the full .NET Framework, and enables developers to re-use skills, controls, code and content to build both rich cross browser web applications, as well as rich desktop Windows applications.
  • Rich Controls: Silverlight 2 includes a rich set of built-in controls that developers and designers can use to quickly build applications.  This upcoming Beta1 release includes core form controls (TextBox, CheckBox, RadioButton, etc), built-in layout management panels (StackPanel, Grid, Panel, etc), common functionality controls (Slider, ScrollViewer, Calendar, DatePicker, etc), and data manipulation controls (DataGrid, ListBox, etc).  The built-in controls support a rich control templating model, which enables developers and designers to collaborate together to build highly polished solutions.

  • Rich Networking Support: Silverlight 2 includes rich networking support.  It includes out of the box support for calling REST, WS*/SOAP, POX, RSS, and standard HTTP services.  It supports cross domain network access (enabling Silverlight clients to directly access resources and data from resources on the web).  Beta1 also includes built-in sockets networking support.

  • Rich Base Class Library: Silverlight 2 includes a rich .NET base class library of functionality (collections, IO, generics, threading, globalization, XML, local storage, etc).  It includes rich APIs that enable HTML DOM/JavaScript integration with .NET code.  It also includes LINQ and LINQ to XML library support (enabling easy transformation and querying of data), as well as local data caching and storage support.  The .NET APIs in Silverlight are a compatible subset of the full .NET Framework.

Silverlight 2 does not require the .NET Framework to be installed on a computer in order to run.  The Silverlight setup download includes everything necessary to enable all the above features (and more we'll be talking about shortly) on a vanilla Mac OSX or Windows machine. 

The Beta1 release of Silverlight 2 is 4.3MB in size, and takes 4-10 seconds to install on a machine that doesn't already have it.  Once Silverlight 2 is installed you can browse the Web and automatically run rich Silverlight applications within your browser of choice (IE, FireFox, Safari, etc).

Silverlight 2 Tutorials: Building A Simple Digg Client

To help people come up to speed with Silverlight 2, I wrote a Silverlight application and put together a series of step by step tutorials that drill into and explain the different programming concepts behind it (controls, layout management, networking, data-binding, styles, user controls, templates, etc). I also added a tutorial post that demonstrates how to migrate the application outside of the browser and make it a desktop application using WPF and the full .NET Framework. 

Below are the pointers to the 8 tutorials I've put together:

The application I've built the tutorials around is a simple search front end to the popular Digg.com site, and allows users to type in search topics and browse Digg stories that match them. 

     <Download Code> Click here to download a completed version of this Digg client sample. </Download Code>

All of the UI in the application is built using Silverlight's WPF framework.  The application uses the Silverlight networking stack and cross-domain access support to query the Digg REST API directly, and uses LINQ and LINQ to XML to query/transform the returned data into DiggStory objects that I databind the UI against:

The application supports a master/details data interaction model that allows users to select stories from the search list and quickly drill into more details about them.  A user can jump to the Digg article directly from the details form, or close it and pick another story to drill into:

The entire application is implemented in about 35 lines of C# code and 75 lines of XAML page/user-control markup.  It only uses controls and libraries built-into Silverlight.

    <Download Code> Click here to download a completed version of this Digg client sample. </Download Code>

If you have used WPF before the UI concepts I discuss in the tutorial series will all be very familiar.  If you haven't used WPF before, the tutorials should provide a good overview of the fundamental programming concepts in it, and hopefully provide you with the basic knowledge necessary to start building Silverlight 2 applications with VS 2008 when Beta1 comes out.

Hope this helps,

Scott

266 Comments

  • hello scott,
    i see there is safari support, is there support for Silverlight on the Iphone ?, this is also a safari browser

  • Is there any information on Windows 2000 support for Beta 1?

  • Thanks for keeping our sprits alive, I was loosing patience, hope to see Silverlight 2.0 Beta released at MIX

    Thanks

  • OMG, Can't wait to read this...

  • I haven't been this excited since I was about 12 on Christmas Eve! :)

  • Silverlight 2 is a very intriguing set of technologies, but I think it's only going to take off if it's possible to build line-of-business apps with it. Can you post more details about the sets of controls -- datagrids, text editors, report viewers, etc -- that are of most use for line of business apps, please?

  • Great post, i'm really looking forward to Silverlight 2. When Silverlight 2 is released will it be backwards compatible with applications built on top of Silverlight 1.0?

  • Great Job!!!

    Thanks,
    Yash

  • Is there anyway webmasters can find out what percentage of our visitors already have silverlight installed on their machines?
    Our current web-stats from google doesn't provide any such information about silverlight plugIns.

  • Thank you Scott for your effort to convey the knowldge and I will be waiting for more stuff.

  • oh.. cool.. :)

    thanks..

  • Sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet! :)

  • Awesome.... looking forward to download it

  • When is silverlight coming for the mobile platform? Such as WM 6.0?

  • So Silverlight gets DataGrid, DateTimePicker and Calendar years before WPF does... weird.

  • Is there any information about future availability of Silverlight for Windows Mobile?

  • Great news Scott. It looks like this is the release that will make a huge % of people really take a good look at Silverlight, myself included :D

  • It sounds great that Silverlight and WPF are getting new UI controls to simplify development. This might not be the appropriate venue but I really hope that the WPF/SL team implements optional nullability into that DatePicker control. This has always been a problem with the DateTimePicker in WinForms and it makes it a real pain to use. I think the UI semantics of Outlook, where buttons for Today and None appear in the bottom of the popup, would work fantastic.

  • Scott, so what about Linux? Silverlight could not fight with Flash now because of lack of Linux support. What are plans to make Silverlight really crossplatform?

  • Great tutorial series! Plus... it's nice to see some of this publicly announced. :)

  • Hey Now Scott,
    This is very exciting! I liked the comment you made on DNR how Silverlight 2 will be used for the Olympics site & will be the most visited site on the webin all time!
    Thx 4 the info,
    Catto

  • "We are shortly going to release the first public beta of Silverlight 2"
    I'm dripping at the mouth Scott, thanks bro.

  • Fantastic, this is great. This is going to change the industry.

    You mention in the tutorial that some controls will need to be shipped in the 'XAP' file. Will there be any provision to cache these files using some form of URL in the assembly resolver?
    If you don't have this I can see everyone will want to ship each control in its own assembly - to optimize deployment package size.

  • Looks very promising. I will definitely give it a try when the beta will be made available.

    I would assume that Silverlight applications are currently not very search engine friendly. Am I right about that?

    Regards,
    Daniel

  • Excellent. Can´t wait to get the beta!!!

  • Good Morning Scott and thank you for the wonderful tutorials on Silver Light 2.0. I am new to both Silver Light and WPF, but able to grasp the concepts with ease from the first two of the tutorial series. I will be eagerly waiting for the Silver Light 2.0 beta 1.

    Best regards,
    Sidd

  • Looks clean and tidy and pretty light too. Looking forward for the 2.0

  • So I see you finally switched to Mac, eh? ;-)

  • All I can say is WOW! Everything great about WPF seems to be in silverlight now, this is truly going to revolutionize the way web applications front ends are built.

  • Wow, Scott, thanks for posting this. I'm going to give it a spin as soon as the beta is available.

  • Scott, please confirm Silverlight 2.0 will support cross-domain access. Also, when is it going to be released?

    For security reasons (to prevent cross domain attacking), silverlight 2.0 alpha does not support cross domain access, that means, the users can not post the silverlight object/embed tag to an outside blog/forum, since the blog/forum is different domain with our site. Please confirm this will be lifted with 2.0. Also, when is it going to be released?

    Thanks,

    Ben

  • will Silverlight 2 include an obfuscator?

    Thanks

  • Scott - This is very exciting. Have already done a few pieces on Silverlight. We'll be watching !
    Keep it up Charlie

  • That's a cool list of silverlight2 tutorials!!

  • I'm curious about how much template support there will be for Silverlight 1.0 in VS2008? I'm really looking forward to going through your tutorials and for SL2.0

    P.S. It's been fun animating your shirt :)

  • Date of release for Silverlight 2.0?

  • I find the versioning scenario right now a bit confusing. I visualize something like silverlight as being a subset of WPF, which is .Net 3.0. I installed .NetCF 3.5 on my WM5.0 phone several weeks ago, but it naturally doesn't include WPF or Silverlight. Are the Silverlight libraries not going to be considered part of the framework proper, and if it is, could there be some clarification as to how the versions (and contents of each) map out? I saw this coming when WinFX got turned into .Net 3.0 and diverged from the CLR versioning, but on the plus side, it's not nearly as confusing with the full (non-CF) framework.

  • Anyone knows where to download Silverlight 2 Beta 1? I didn't have a luck... Plz?!

  • Hi Scott,

    What will Silverlight 2 offer in terms of accessibility, e.g. AAA or Section 508 compatibility?

    From experiences in 1.0 there was no accessibility.

    Cheers,

    Dan

  • Very nice! Thanks for the work you've put into this.

    I hope that Silverlight will have a nice default look and feel and support for styling controls using CSS (like Flex).

  • "I'll post details on my blog once Beta1 is available for download."

    So... when will it be available?

    -- Cale

  • What I REALLY hope from Silverlight is the ability to host Winforms on top of the Silverlight framework. I have seen a third party control do that. Because what makes the web weak, in my opinion, is the inability to have rich editing like an Excel spreadsheet would offer. But if you could throw a wingrid into a silverlight space and bind it, that would definitely be something very useful to those of use who do more than just static, presentation type websites.

  • This looks great, here's hoping you've got a Macbook Pro as your main machine ;)

  • Will Silverlight 2 support printing?

  • What was the color scheme that you used in all of your demos using Visual Studio 2008?...it was very easy on the eyes. Thanks Scott! By the way, awesome presentation!

  • Silverlight is getting better and better...

    now all I need is a real project to use it in...

  • Fantastic. I've waited (still am) months for this but it was worth.
    I've developed a Silverlight 1.1 case for the Brazilian TechEd 2007 and it was a huge success. I imagine what I could've done then if I had Silverlight 2.
    Can't wait for the download. I wish I could be on MIX this year.....

  • Nice Job.. in showing it in Apple's safari and using the default theme color of Adobe Flex.

  • what happened to the DLR support from 1.1 that never really shipped. I hope that silverlight 2 is just the release name/number for silverlight 1.1. the dlr part of the system is very important to me and my plans for building a silverlight app

  • Do XBAP's have a future given Silverlight 2.0 ? Will SL2.0 be appropriate for enterprise line-of-business apps ? e.g. what authentication modes supported, high-performace datagrid (tens of thousands of rows), etc. Or do we still need full WPF for business apps ?

  • Hi Scott,

    will we be able to run workflow on it?

  • What is the current release road map for this product? When will be Beta 1 be available, and when are you currently targeting final RTM/W?

  • Are there feature sets to somehow use Silverlight within an ASP.NET MVC App?
    I mean, will there be something allows to use Silverlight's XAML-pages (with all it's animation powers) just instead plain HTML-pages and Javascript as the full-featured View (and all user interaction logic concentrated inside server-side controllers)? Or some concept instead of this but with the same simplicity, control and the ability to be fast-developed?

    Let's say just call RenderSilverView("Index"); from inside the controller to give user the "Index.xaml" page. Any ideas about this?


    There is also question about common Silverlight's "Testability" and "Agility". Yeah, I mean all these "lightweightity" concepts we now see in the MVC Framework.

  • Flash supports Mpeg-4 (H.264)
    Silverlight supports WMV (VC-1)

    I wonder if not having H.264 video support will be an issue. Yes I know WMV is a fairly open spec but there is no good technical reason to have to manage two encodings of all videos, it's just more work.

    Also quick comments on a couple of questions posted here:

    >>Will silverlight support Windows 2000?

    Like the commercial says: Dude...

    >>Silverlight 2 include an obfuscator?

    Its amazing to me how much developers worry about this when the reality is it's easier technically and legally for a company to just clean room implement anything they want from you rather trying to play cat and mouse obfuscation games.

  • Thanks Scott!
    just a question , are RTL languages supported in silverlight 2?

  • Does it support simply chinese character? Silverlight doesn't support.

  • I'm really psyched about Silverlight 2.0, it certainly talks the talk. Glad to see some information on which classes will make it in, I'd been desperate to hear about that.

    However, both my developer friend and I looked at each other in shock at a couple of points... local storage support, and cross-domain support? Alarms went off. Loudly. Can I ask what the security situation is?

    Thanks for a great poss as per Scott.

  • Holy sh.. I knew it would be good.. but given that we're working with xbap right now for some prototypes.. its like I'm looking at the same thing.. only with a cross platform plugin under 10mb..

    (granted xbap being wpf has some more higher level features, but wow)

    This is a mega product...

  • Aw, man! Totally unfair to post great tutorials but not the Silverlight we need to do it on our own! :) Great stuff though, can't wait!

  • wow great news. But Can I ask this question to clearify, What will be the requirement on the server to run a silverlight applictaion?

  • This looks great Scott. Will Silverlight be available for Windows Mobile.

  • Good Tutorials, thanks.

  • Great news Scott.

    Its good to see SL making a big jump from 1.0 to 2.0. very attractive set of APIs and UI controls.

    but still no details about the SL Mobile :/

    looking forward for it.

    // chall3ng3r //

  • Woot! Yeah! Yay! /me wants SL2.0 !!!!

  • Like the famous words from Scoble: "I noticed a tear running down my face." :)

    Silverlight 2.0 is going to be sweet! It's all I was hoping for and then some, great work, one of the most interesting platforms to date in my opinion.

  • Great.Looking forward playing with it.
    Can u please share any knowledge about silverlight for windows mobile 6 or upcoming version

  • SilverLight is awesome ....guys one thing's for sure and that is Microsoft rocks....

  • Thanks for this post.
    I am really trying to combine WPF and Silverlight effort.

  • i think that silverlight about to be like Flash Flex Silver
    am i true or i gave u a new idea

  • Scott, would please consider posting the code as text? It has several benefits for the readers and for you. We can copy paste the code, it saves you the trouble of taking screenshots and using the right css even long lines of codes should be readable using a vertical scrollbar inside the code block.

    I ask this because yesterday the images were missing and now that the images are showing up, I see that some code is obscured because the image width is limited.

    Thanks!

  • 4.3 mb? thats some strong voodoo man :)
    awsome work :D cant wait til mix :)

  • In Steve Balmer's words: "DataGrid! DataGrid! DataGrid! DataGrid! DataGrid! DataGrid! DataGrid! DataGrid! DataGrid! DataGrid! DataGrid! DataGrid! ", pant pant pant "DataGrid! DataGrid! DataGrid! DataGrid! DataGrid! DataGrid! DataGrid! DataGrid!"

  • It is not often that something comes along that changes the way things are done ... imo Silverlight is a huge step forward, and will finally make writing a program for the web almost identical to writing a program for the desktop. The debate of should we make this a WEB App or a Forms App will no longer need to be waged ... we will do both. This is fantastic news ... keep up the great work Scott

  • Great scott.
    In silverlight1.1, there is no core controls like textbox, dropdownlist and data manipulation controls.
    So, developing an application is so painful.
    Actually i started to learn silverlight 1.1.
    but i dropped. because very few controls supported(rectangle, mediaelement etc in 1.1).
    After read this article really i excited.
    now i am waiting for the release date of silverlight 2.
    :-)

  • Hi,

    Any news on opera and safari windows support? I'm a diehard opera user and can't view any silverlight apps yet. This also stops me from using silverlight yet, although I like it like 1000 times more than flash.

    Tom

  • Really interesting and nice.

  • use the word "rich" some more please?...

  • Why still nothing about Windows Mobile support?

  • Woohooo, cant wait cant wait. It's like my birthday again.

  • Hi scott
    why there is no datagrid in WPF until now? is there any plan to add it soon?

  • Great News.Eagerly waiting for release.
    Just curious about the support in the Linux and in mobile devices.
    Specially for Windows mobile 6.0 and later version.
    Also Is there any Idea of supporting it in other Mobile devices Like Black Berry,Palm e.t.c

  • I was looking forward for this from you.Anyway , is there any provision to create wcf proxy in silverlight beta 1.

  • Will there be a SafeDialog?

    I´m developing a xbap at the moment, and there is no save dialog supported, because of security restirctions. The only way to store something on the client machine is to use a hyperlink to a file on the server...

  • Hi Scott,

    Way to Go!!!! I am really excited to get my hands on it.

  • Wow, Impressive. If SilverLight can be integreated into ASP.MVC Views this will be very impressive.

    How do I convince my boss that enabling Silverlight pages will be secure, and not end up full distracting popups ?

  • Hi;
    I am From Iran..
    Tanks to this Article its very Good.

  • Hope it will be officially released soon. My application will not be a beta anymore.
    Thanks,

  • Still no 3D I guess or anything for the designer. Not every graphic in 2008 has to have gradients.
    The strange thing is that this is not a replacement of Flash. This is what modern browsers should already have built into their JavaScript interpreter.
    I cannot imagine such beautiful websites done in Silverlight as we can find in Flash on thefwa.com.
    I would love to just switch but I guess I'll be using Flash for beauty and Silverlight to make a funny interactive pop-up :).

  • Will this upcoming Silverlight Beta have support for Firefox 3.0 Beta 3?

  • Images are not loading in any of your posts

  • Hi Mike and Rik,

    >>>>>> Images are not loading in any of your posts

    The web-server I'm hosting the pics on seems to be having a problem at the moment. I just sent them mail to see if I can get it fixed. Hopefully it will be back up soon.

    Thanks,

    Scott

  • Hey Scott, a couple of questions...

    1. Is support for compact framework coming with Silverlight 2? If no, can you give us any idea when?

    2. For linux and mac support did you guys leverage any of the efforts made by the Mono crew? Or is this an entirely separate versions of the framework?

    The 2nd question is just out of interest, but the first is quite important, as for many companies (such as the one I'm currently working with) lack of support for WPF on the compact framework is holding them back from adopting the technology.

  • Ping back from Strangenut.

  • Hi Paolo,

    >>>>>>> Is there any information on Windows 2000 support for Beta 1?

    Yes - Silverlight 2 supports Windows 2000 starting with Beta1.

    Thanks,

    Scott

  • Hi Parvenu74

    >>>>>>> Can you post more details about the sets of controls -- datagrids, text editors, report viewers, etc -- that are of most use for line of business apps, please?

    Yes - we'll have more posts on these scenarios in the weeks ahead.

    Thanks,

    Scott

  • Hi Chris,

    >>>>>> Great post, i'm really looking forward to Silverlight 2. When Silverlight 2 is released will it be backwards compatible with applications built on top of Silverlight 1.0?

    Yes, SL 2 is backwards compatible with SL 1 applications.

    Hope this helps,

    Scott

  • Hi Puvi,

    >>>>>> Is there anyway webmasters can find out what percentage of our visitors already have silverlight installed on their machines?

    Yes - you can write a JavaScript function that samples clients and updates the server with details on this.

    You can also easily integrate a SL 2 installation experience to your site for users who don't have SL already installed.

    Hope this helps,

    Scott

  • Hi Nirav and Max C,

    >>>>>> When is silverlight coming for the mobile platform? Such as WM 6.0?

    Silverlight will also be coming to mobile devices. We'll have more details on that in the future.

    Hope this helps,

    Scott

  • Hi Ego,

    >>>>>> Scott, so what about Linux? Silverlight could not fight with Flash now because of lack of Linux support. What are plans to make Silverlight really crossplatform?

    All of the Silverlight 2 features will also be available on Linux. We are partnering with Novell to build a compatible SL 2 implementation for Linux.

    Hope this helps,

    Scott

  • Hi Joe,

    >>>>>>> You mention in the tutorial that some controls will need to be shipped in the 'XAP' file. Will there be any provision to cache these files using some form of URL in the assembly resolver?

    Yes - you can partition your application into multiple .xap files. They can then be cached at different levels of granularity if you want.

    Hope this helps,

    Scott

  • Hi Daniel,

    >>>>>> I would assume that Silverlight applications are currently not very search engine friendly. Am I right about that?

    Silverlight applications (like Flash and AJAX) typically require some additional work to have search engines crawl them and be indexed. We'll come out with guidance on how to-do this best.

    Hope this helps,

    Scott

  • Hi Ben,

    >>>>>> Scott, please confirm Silverlight 2.0 will support cross-domain access. Also, when is it going to be released?

    Yes - SL 2 supports cross domain network access. Tutorial #3 of my series above shows an example of it in action.

    Thanks,

    Scott

  • Hi Keith,

    >>>>>> I find the versioning scenario right now a bit confusing.

    Silverlight will have a conistent versioning numbering on desktop and mobile devices. We decided not to call it SL 3.5 (to match .NET 3.5) since that would have been a little confusing with the first release.

    Hope this helps,

    Scott

  • Hi Dan,

    >>>>>> What will Silverlight 2 offer in terms of accessibility, e.g. AAA or Section 508 compatibility?

    Silverlight 2.0 supports accessibility and will work with screen-readers. You'll be able to build Section 508 and AAA sites with it.

    Hope this helps,

    Scott

  • Hi Ron,

    >>>>>>> What I REALLY hope from Silverlight is the ability to host Winforms on top of the Silverlight framework. I have seen a third party control do that. Because what makes the web weak, in my opinion, is the inability to have rich editing like an Excel spreadsheet would offer. But if you could throw a wingrid into a silverlight space and bind it, that would definitely be something very useful to those of use who do more than just static, presentation type websites.

    Silverlight is cross platform, and so it doesn't support hosting Windows forms controls in it (since those rely on Win32). WPF on the other hand, does fully support hosting Windows forms controls.

    Hope this helps,

    Scott

  • More simple samples please,thanks

  • Hi Leo,

    >>>>>> What was the color scheme that you used in all of your demos using Visual Studio 2008?...it was very easy on the eyes. Thanks Scott! By the way, awesome presentation!

    I'm using a slightly modified version of Oren's theme here: http://www.hanselman.com/blog/VisualStudioProgrammerThemesGallery.aspx

    Hope this helps,

    Scott

  • Hi Mike,

    >>>>>> what happened to the DLR support from 1.1 that never really shipped.

    The DLR is available for download today (and has been for several months), and can be used with full .NET Framework applications. We'll also have DLR support in Silverlight 2.0 Beta1.

    Hope this helps,

    Scott

  • Hi Ruurd,

    >>>>>> will we be able to run workflow on it?

    No - workflow isn't part of Silverlight 2. We needed to keep the download size of Silverlight down (to only 4MB) and so not all features of .NET are included.

    Hope this helps,

    Scott

  • Hi Alan,

    >>>>>>> Does it support simply chinese character? Silverlight doesn't support.

    Yes - SL 2 supports asian fonts and IME support. It can also use the system fonts and doesn't require font packages to be downloaded.

    Hope this helps,

    Scott

  • Hi Shem,

    >>>>>> I'm really psyched about Silverlight 2.0, it certainly talks the talk. Glad to see some information on which classes will make it in, I'd been desperate to hear about that. However, both my developer friend and I looked at each other in shock at a couple of points... local storage support, and cross-domain support? Alarms went off. Loudly. Can I ask what the security situation is?

    Silverlight 2 applications run in a secure sandbox. End users can set policy to limit local storage options (by default an application is allowed 1Mb). When a user flushes their internet cache the local storage is cleared - just like cookies.

    Hope this helps,

    Scott

  • Hi vik20000in,

    wow great news. But Can I ask this question to clearify, What will be the requirement on the server to run a silverlight applictaion?

    You can download a Silverlight application from any web-server. There is no server software required.

    Hope this helps,

    Scott

  • Hi Mike,

    >>>>>> Scott, would please consider posting the code as text? It has several benefits for the readers and for you. We can copy paste the code, it saves you the trouble of taking screenshots and using the right css even long lines of codes should be readable using a vertical scrollbar inside the code block.

    Sorry about that. I've tried posting code snippets in the past, but have received complaints because some RSS readers don't handle CSS correctly. I'll post the full code project for download once SL Beta1 is available.

    Thanks,

    Scott

  • Hi Tom,

    >>>>>> Any news on opera and safari windows support? I'm a diehard opera user and can't view any silverlight apps yet. This also stops me from using silverlight yet, although I like it like 1000 times more than flash.

    We are planning to support Opera and Safari on Windows in the future (they kinda work now - but we haven't done a full test pass on them for beta1). It is definitely something we are looking to-do in the future though.

    Thanks,

    Scott

  • Hi Abdullah,

    >>>>>>> why there is no datagrid in WPF until now? is there any plan to add it soon?

    Yes - we are planning to add one to WPF as well. I blogged about this in this recent post: http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2008/02/19/net-3-5-client-product-roadmap.aspx

    Hope this helps,

    Scott

  • Hi Razan,

    >>>>>> I was looking forward for this from you.Anyway , is there any provision to create wcf proxy in silverlight beta 1.

    Yes - you'll be able to call WCF end-points with Beta1.

    Thanks,

    Scott

  • Hi Christian,

    >>>>>> Will there be a SaveDialog? I´m developing a xbap at the moment, and there is no save dialog supported, because of security restirctions. The only way to store something on the client machine is to use a hyperlink to a file on the server...

    We don't have one in Beta1 (we have OpenDialog but no save). There are some interesting security implications that we want to make sure we get absolutely right before we add it. Until then I recommend uploading to the server and using a hyperlink to prompt the browser's save dialog.

    Thanks,

    Scott

  • Hi Gabriel,

    >>>>>> Will this upcoming Silverlight Beta have support for Firefox 3.0 Beta 3?

    FireFox 3.0 will be supported by SL 2 when it ships. They recently changed how rendering works for plugins with their recent beta, and we know we have some issues with that with Beta1. We'll be fixing them in Beta2 though.

    Hope this helps,

    Scott

  • Hi Mike,

    >>>>>> Images are not loading in any of your posts

    Sorry about that - the load balancer in front of my web-server was acting up. They have it fixed now.

    Thanks,

    Scott

  • I really think SL2 will be the Next Big Thing (tm) :)

    However, I do have some questions:

    1a. How is unittesting supported?
    1b. Will there be WatiN (or similar) support to unittest the GUI?
    2a. How can we do coverage tests on client side?
    2b. How will it be possible to benchmark the client side code? Is there support already in existing tools like RedGate's ANTS?
    3. Will it be possible to use the MVC framework in any way along with SL code?
    4. As far as I can see from the demo everything is put in 1 file for download on client. Does this mean that we need to create a project for each of our controls or is there a way to make the compiler split up things by itself?
    5. How is updates of the SL files handled on client side? The WebResource method makes it quite easy to make sure you are getting latest version, however that seems to be impossible in this scenario?
    6. How is localization supported? Will it be possible to change on client side without having to re-download all components?
    7. Will it actually have firefox support? 1.1 doesn't work in FF at all.
    8. I presume unsafe code is impossible?

    Thanks for putting this tutorial together, it was a great read :)

  • Hi Dennis,

    >>>>>>>I really think SL2 will be the Next Big Thing (tm) :) However, I do have some questions:

    >>>>>>>1a. How is unittesting supported?

    We'll be supporting a unit testing framework with Silverlight 2. I'll blog more details on this in the future.

    >>>>>>1b. Will there be WatiN (or similar) support to unittest the GUI?

    Silverlight 2 also supports UI automation interfaces. This will allow GUI automation testing.

    >>>>>>>2a. How can we do coverage tests on client side?

    We will have tools to capture code coverage.

    >>>>>>> 2b. How will it be possible to benchmark the client side code? Is there support already in existing tools like RedGate's ANTS?

    Not entirely sure on this one. I don't think RedGate supports this yet - but they should be able to with SL 2.

    >>>>>>> 3. Will it be possible to use the MVC framework in any way along with SL code?

    You could have your ASP.NET MVC views be SL based pages. Silverlight's WPF UI framework also supports pretty nice model/view separation, which enables you to decouple UI from state/data/actions. This combined with the unit testing support enables a pretty clean way to-do TDD.

    >>>>>>>> 4. As far as I can see from the demo everything is put in 1 file for download on client. Does this mean that we need to create a project for each of our controls or is there a way to make the compiler split up things by itself?

    You can pull in multiple files if you want. We also support a Silverlight Class Library project which allows you to compile an assembly for your projects. You can then reference these class library projects from your Silverlight Application projects.

    >>>>>>>> 5. How is updates of the SL files handled on client side? The WebResource method makes it quite easy to make sure you are getting latest version, however that seems to be impossible in this scenario?

    Silverlight .xap files are static files, and so the browser uses the standard caching mechanism to detect updates and download them from the server.

    >>>>>>>> 6. How is localization supported? Will it be possible to change on client side without having to re-download all components?

    I don't know all the details on how this will work right now, but it will be possible to use localized resources in your application. We'll have more details on scenarios you can enable in the future.

    >>>>>>>> 7. Will it actually have firefox support? 1.1 doesn't work in FF at all.

    Yes - we support FireFox. Silverlight 1.1 supported FireFox as well - what version of FireFox were you having problems with?

    >>>>>>>> 8. I presume unsafe code is impossible?

    Correct - Silverlight applications run in a secure sandbox, and you can't execute unsafe code.

    >>>>>>>> Thanks for putting this tutorial together, it was a great read :)

    Cool - glad you liked it! It was fun to write (well...after I finished it at 4:30am on Friday I was able to look back and call it fun ).

    Thanks,

    Scott

  • Scott- Will Silverlight 2.0 support UI Automation?

  • Hi Adam,

    >>>>>> Scott- Will Silverlight 2.0 support UI Automation?

    Yes - it will support both UI automation as well as unit testing.

    Hope this helps,

    Scott

  • Hi Yaip,

    >>>>>> From the tutorials, it looks like there is no designer support (yet). Everything needs to be typed in.

    We'll be shipping designer support for Silverlight with Beta1 as well. I'll blog about this in the near future (I think you'll like it ).

    Thanks,

    Scott

  • Thanks Scott for the quick response. One last question :) Is UIAutomation going to work inside Firefox though? I mean can you access the UI element from within the Firefox parent window...

  • Hi Adam,

    >>>>>> Thanks Scott for the quick response. One last question :) Is UIAutomation going to work inside Firefox though? I mean can you access the UI element from within the Firefox parent window...

    Yes, I believe so. I think we support the standard Windows automation apis (which enable screen readers and testing automation for both IE and FireFox).

    Hope this helps,

    Scott

  • this is very exciting. Its amazing how much power you guys are putting in our hand with such a small download. I can't wait to play with it in vs 2008.

  • Thats really wonderful.

    Application will look more professional and attractive.

  • I think Microsoft would take the whole streaming-market if they support H.264 on WMS and Silverlight... Why? Because H.264 is an open standard that is supported on mobile phones, setop-boxes, etc, etc... As you know Flash supports H.264, but they have shosen to lock down the open standard in properitary transport protocol. If Microsoft do this the open way - Flash will be gone!

  • Is it silverlight 2.0 only can develop by visual studio 2008?
    I hope it can on VWD 2008.......

  • Thanx Scott, I blogged about your post on the romanian site. I can't wait to get my hands on Silverlight 2.0. I've been developing my final year project in Silverlight 1.1 and stopped few weeks ago. I'm waiting and so do the others..... ;)

  • I can´t wait for the silver light 3.0, 4.0 ...

  • Well Well Well, here comes the web....

  • scott:

    While I welcome news of the beta and enhancements to silverlight . Would it have killed you to time the article with the actual availability of the beta ? what a developer buzzkill to read all about this wonderful tool only to find out that I can't touch it or play with it. I could have remained blissfully ignorant that a beta was comming until you put up a post "available now - silverlight 2.0 and oh BTW here is a excellent 8 part article on some cool stuff you can do with our new beta" I know its a cultural thing at MS but its sometimes frustrating when these things happen

  • Thanks Scott for your response on Windows 2000. Silverlight 2.0 is really looking incredible.

    I was wondering if Silverlight 2.0 will support Postbacks from UpdatePanels or can be called or databound from the code-behind?

    In our current system, I'm using Silverlight 1.0 that responds to UpdatePanel postbacks and events that are fired. The way I accomplish this is on a server event, the code-behind renders Javascript functions onto an UpdatePanel and the Silverlight listens to the PageRequestManager endRequest to call the new Javascript.

    I thought that would be much easier and less roundabout if the code-behind could pass information directly into the Silverlight component. Will Silverlight 2.0 support this kind of functionality?

  • What are the limits on accessing information from other domains and local storage? Will users be notified when a Silverlight app pulls information across domains? I could imagine an innocent game from a "trusted" domain that was really a peer to peer file sharing system behind the scenes accessing other domains and using local storage.

  • Hi ! ScottGu

    I was wondering if Silverlight 2.0 will support Component for HTML render or Web Browser Control?

    Thanks !

  • Scott;

    I didn't see any question/answer regarding getting data from database. Could please tell us what are the plans for data communication with database?

    Thanks!
    ..Ben

  • Hi Scott,
    I noticed that Windows 2000 will be supported, which is great!
    If that can be supported, then why not .Net 3.5/ Windows 2000 support?
    Thanks,

  • Will an xap be able to contain more than one control and then could be chosen in the html/javascript, which one will be rendered?

  • Any inclusion of native Drag and Drop support? Especially the ability for a user to drag and drop a file from the desktop to the application without opening a file browser dialogue like in Adobe Air?

    Also any access to the clipboard for copy/paste operations?

  • Hello Scott,
    Thanks for the tutorials and all the replies so far. Also congratulations on the promotion!
    I would like to reiterate Hassan's question about Silverlight 2.0 support in the Visual Studio 2008 Express Editions, specifically Visual C# 2008 Express.
    I've been waiting quite a while (more than 6 months I think) to use Silverlight 1.1 without having to deal with the financial overhead of the full Visual Studio 2008 IDE.
    Thanks again.

  • Hello. What about Triggers? will SL 2 support them?

  • META question: Is there a way you can somehow move/hide pingbacks, trackbacks, etc. in your blog? Really results in a high noise ratio when trying to read comments, especially since you are so frequently linked.

    META META question: Who's the idiot that decided trackbacks should appear as blog comments anyway? It's the dumbest design decision ever but like 90% of blogs do it. Someone needs to take charge in this space and get the default changed! :-)

    Sorry for the off-topic, but not like this is any more noise than the hundreds of trackbacks I just waded through....

  • I am asking again. Will I be able to use Visual Web Developer Express Edition to develop SL 2.0?

  • Could you do a post on Adobe's Air vs Silverlight 2.0 (to dispell some of the misinformation out there)?

  • I see big potential!

  • Will SL2 support Triggers?

  • Scott, any support for image manipulation similar to that of System.Drawing in beta 1 or planed by delivery? Cross -platform image manipulation would be fantastic!

  • How about video capture? Is this something still only available in Flash?

  • Scott, Fantastic post thanks for it as people have already said not only gives great coverage of SL 2.0 but also WPF.

    I have a question though concerning using SL for business apps and how you envisage it doing CRUD operations on a database. From what I understand SL will support Linq and Linq to XML. So does this mean that on the server side we use Linq to SQL to create an XML doc send that to the SL client which can query, run linq over it etc. But how do we then track changes and send them back to the server ?
    Will you be introducing a new disconnected data context or something ?
    On the server side will there be some sort of helper lib that uses reflection to create the xml doc from the linq to sql result ?
    I guess ideally if we use partial classes to implement validation to our linq classes on the server it would be ideal if those same partial classes could be used on the client to implement the same validation in the UI. eg. If we have a Product table in our DB and we create a Product class using linq to SQL and a partial product Class that has validation eg. productDescription cannot be blank. It would be nice if out of the box the Product class had a property of xmlstring which would output a basic xmls string which contains the contents of the product class. This could then be sent up to the silverlight UI which would have the partial Product class with our validation copied to it's project along with a new xml sourced partial product class (sourced using a utility as part of the linq designer) to persist the xml on the client and then send it back to the server.

    I have probably done a terrible job of explaining what I mean but Thanks in advance for whatever you can explain to me about how it will work.

    Steve

  • >>>We are planning to support Opera and Safari on Windows in the future (they kinda work now - but we haven't done a full test pass on them for beta1). It is definitely something we are looking to-do in the future though.

    ------

    Arg, just support it. Just go write support for Opera. I don't wanna have to use Firefox or IE.

    God if i could use C# in flex i wouldn't even bother with SilverLight since i can use flex with OPERA!

  • Hi Scott,
    thanks for great news. How long do you estimate we will have to wait to get our hands on Silverlight 2.0 Beta 1 bits? And one more question - is there going to be rich text editing control included in 2.0 - one of the controls important to many business applications which is hardly possible to custom-develop.
    Thanks for answers and thanks for your blog and the work you put in it. It's really great source of information for everyone developing on .NET technologies.
    Martin

  • Hi Scott!

    I am a little confused about SL 2.0. With the .net support it's making the line vanish between thick and fat clients. I could write a client using SL + WCF creating a soa architecture. So it's basically like a platform independent WPF client (only hosted by the browser) And since it enables me to create beautifull nextgen UI, I almost prefer it to ASP.NET. (I know I can use it with asp.net but that's an other story)
    Am I getting this wrong? Where is the line?

    Thanks!

    Zoltan

  • Is this version going to include Webcam and Microphone support?

  • Will you be able to use any of the tools in Expression Studio to build SL2 apps? Namely Expression Blend??

  • Scott,

    Does Silverlight have the ability to capture audio from the user's microphone and send it back to the server to save as a file?

  • I have been wondering about how a Silverlight application would support search engines. Or in general can you give us some guidance as to when to use Silverlight and when other Web technologies? Thanks much.

  • Scott,
    Is it still first qtr for beta 1?

  • 1. Lean on the SharePoint guys a little to provide quicker (direct) support in VS2008 for AJAX and Silverlight.
    2. Can we have a Calendar control that can scale, using a fixed aspect ratio, from mini to large, and that can be sub-classed to provide other view types besides a grid?

  • Hey Scott,

    Will SL2 have deep linking support?

    Thanks,
    Dave

  • Support for socket is great.I look forward to move my WPF application to silverlight.

  • Hi Ming,

    >>>>>> I hope it can on VWD 2008.......

    We'll also support Silverlight development with VWD 2008.

    Thanks,

    Scott

  • Hi Jules,

    >>>>>>>> So very excited by Silverlight 2.0 Beta. There is a lot here about DataGrids, and Desktop GUI controls, but little about Graphics options which i am really interested in. Will we get more on Polylines/ Polygons Points etc support in Silverlight/ Blend Update ?

    Silverlight also has a very rich graphics layer. I'll be blogging about that more in the future.

    Thanks,

    Scott

  • Hi Paolo,

    >>>>>>> was wondering if Silverlight 2.0 will support Postbacks from UpdatePanels or can be called or databound from the code-behind? In our current system, I'm using Silverlight 1.0 that responds to UpdatePanel postbacks and events that are fired. The way I accomplish this is on a server event, the code-behind renders Javascript functions onto an UpdatePanel and the Silverlight listens to the PageRequestManager endRequest to call the new Javascript. I thought that would be much easier and less roundabout if the code-behind could pass information directly into the Silverlight component. Will Silverlight 2.0 support this kind of functionality?

    Silverligth 2 doesn't support postbacks in the ASP.NET sense - but it does support the ability to call JSON web-services in ASP.NET. You can call back to either page-level webmethods or ones in .asmx or .svc (WCF) web-services inside an ASP.NET application.

    Hope this helps,

    Scott

  • Hi Marcus,

    >>>>>>> What are the limits on accessing information from other domains and local storage? Will users be notified when a Silverlight app pulls information across domains? I could imagine an innocent game from a "trusted" domain that was really a peer to peer file sharing system behind the scenes accessing other domains and using local storage.

    One thing that is important to call out is that "local storage" doesn't mean your hard drive in this case. A remote site can't get access to your local files on disk (just like they can't with AJAX).

    What a Silverlight application can do is store content in a cache which acts like a browser cookie. It is only available to that site, and an end user can grant or deny it the rights to-do that (as well as control the size of the cache). The cache will be persisted by default when a user closes the browser and re-opens it and visits the same site again - but the user can deny permission to-do this if they want.

    Hope this helps,

    Scott

  • Hi PhuongNam,

    >>>>>>> I was wondering if Silverlight 2.0 will support Component for HTML render or Web Browser Control?

    Silverlight supports hosting html on top of the Silverlight canvas, and has APIs that allow for HTML DOM access. This would allow you to render HTML within an application using the browser Silverlight is hosted within.

    Thanks,

    Scott

  • Hi Ben,

    >>>>>> I didn't see any question/answer regarding getting data from database. Could please tell us what are the plans for data communication with database?

    Silverlight supports several networking approaches that you can use to talk back to a server. These include REST, WCF, SOAP, WS*, HTTP and Sockets. Typically you'd have a server access a database directly, and then send back a payload of data to Silverlight which would then work on it locally, apply updates, and send it back to the web-server to revalidate and update the database with.

    Hope this helps,

    Scott

  • Hi John,

    >>>>>>> I noticed that Windows 2000 will be supported, which is great! If that can be supported, then why not .Net 3.5/ Windows 2000 support?

    WPF and WCF inside the .NET 3.5 framework rely on Windows features that are only in Windows XP and higher (specifically with the graphics stack for WPF and the http.sys networking stack with WCF). That is why the full .NET Framework 3.5 install doesn't work on Windows 2000.

    Silverlight 2 doesn't rely on these components, which is why it works on Windows 2000.

    Hope this helps,

    Scott

  • Hi elnino1981

    >>>>>> Will an xap be able to contain more than one control and then could be chosen in the html/javascript, which one will be rendered?

    Yes, you can have multiple controls in a single .xap file.

    You can also have one .xap file load, and then download another .xap file (or two) to load and run.

    Hope this helps,

    Scott

  • Hi Chris,

    >>>>>>> Any inclusion of native Drag and Drop support? Especially the ability for a user to drag and drop a file from the desktop to the application without opening a file browser dialogue like in Adobe Air?

    You'll be able to-do drag/drop within the browser. For browser security reasons we don't support drag/drop from the file-system into the browser (in the same way that Flash/Flex and AJAX don't allow this). WPF desktop applications obviously support this though.

    >>>>>>> Also any access to the clipboard for copy/paste operations?

    We support copy/paste from textboxes.

    Hope this helps,

    Scott

  • Hi Brian,

    >>>>>>> I would like to reiterate Hassan's question about Silverlight 2.0 support in the Visual Studio 2008 Express Editions, specifically Visual C# 2008 Express.

    Yes - we'll support SL 2 development using the express editions of Visual Studio in the future.

    Thanks,

    Scott

  • Hi Ariel,

    >>>>>> Hello. What about Triggers? will SL 2 support them?

    Triggers aren't in Silverlight 2 Beta1 - but we are evaluating adding them for Beta2. Styles, Control Templates and DataTemplates are all in Beta2.

    Hope this helps,

    Scott

  • Hi pw,

    >>>>>> META question: Is there a way you can somehow move/hide pingbacks, trackbacks, etc. in your blog? Really results in a high noise ratio when trying to read comments, especially since you are so frequently linked.

    Unfortunately I don't have the ability to turn these off unfortunately. :-( I've looked in the past for a way to at least change their color, but my blog engine doesn't seem to support that.

    Sorry!

    Scott

  • Hi Hassan,

    >>>>>> I am asking again. Will I be able to use Visual Web Developer Express Edition to develop SL 2.0?

    Yes - we'll support this in the future. We don't support it with Beta1, but we will enable it going forward before Silverlight 2 ships.

    Thanks,

    Scott

  • Hi Lynn,

    >>>>>>> Scott, any support for image manipulation similar to that of System.Drawing in beta 1 or planed by delivery? Cross -platform image manipulation would be fantastic!

    We have byte and stream access that you can use with images, but we don't have a bitmap API that directly render images to a stream built-in. You could write one yourself or use a library to enable this though.

    Hope this helps,

    Scott

  • Hi Ken,

    >>>>>>> How about video capture? Is this something still only available in Flash?

    Video capture isn't supported in Beta1 unfortunately. It is something we are looking to enable in the future though.

    Thanks,

    Scott

  • Hi Steve,

    >>>>>>>> Scott, Fantastic post thanks for it as people have already said not only gives great coverage of SL 2.0 but also WPF.

    >>>>>>>> I have a question though concerning using SL for business apps and how you envisage it doing CRUD operations on a database. From what I understand SL will support Linq and Linq to XML. So does this mean that on the server side we use Linq to SQL to create an XML doc send that to the SL client which can query, run linq over it etc. But how do we then track changes and send them back to the server ? Will you be introducing a new disconnected data context or something ?

    We'll have libraries that will help do change tracking and handle disconnected state for data operations. It will work with a variety of backend data providers - including LINQ to SQL and LINQ to Entities.

    >>>>>>>> On the server side will there be some sort of helper lib that uses reflection to create the xml doc from the linq to sql result ?

    In addition to the client-library to manage this will have a server equivalent to handle the server side.

    >>>>>>>>> I guess ideally if we use partial classes to implement validation to our linq classes on the server it would be ideal if those same partial classes could be used on the client to implement the same validation in the UI. eg. If we have a Product table in our DB and we create a Product class using linq to SQL and a partial product Class that has validation eg. productDescription cannot be blank. It would be nice if out of the box the Product class had a property of xmlstring which would output a basic xmls string which contains the contents of the product class. This could then be sent up to the silverlight UI which would have the partial Product class with our validation copied to it's project along with a new xml sourced partial product class (sourced using a utility as part of the linq designer) to persist the xml on the client and then send it back to the server.

    Yep - we agree. Stay tuned for more details in the future... ;-)

    Thanks,

    Scott

  • Hi Martin,

    >>>>>>>> thanks for great news. How long do you estimate we will have to wait to get our hands on Silverlight 2.0 Beta 1 bits? And one more question - is there going to be rich text editing control included in 2.0 - one of the controls important to many business applications which is hardly possible to custom-develop.

    It won't be too long now. We don't have a rich text edit control in Beta1, but will be providing one in the future. We do allow you to host a HTML editing surface which enables rich text editing scenarios in beta1 which is what a lot of applications are using to enable these scenarios right now.

    Hope this helps,

    Scott

  • Hi Zoltan,

    >>>>>> I am a little confused about SL 2.0. With the .net support it's making the line vanish between thick and fat clients. I could write a client using SL + WCF creating a soa architecture. So it's basically like a platform independent WPF client (only hosted by the browser) And since it enables me to create beautifull nextgen UI, I almost prefer it to ASP.NET. (I know I can use it with asp.net but that's an other story) Am I getting this wrong? Where is the line?

    The benefit with .NET is that you can now build applications that run purely on the server and use HTML/AJAX, run as desktop of Office applications, run on mobile devices, and now run inside the browser cross-plat. The good news for .NET developers is that you basically have the flexibility to choose whatever language you want, and use a consistent set of APIs and a rich set of development and design tools to build solutions. This gives you maximum flexibility and a ton of power.

    Thanks,

    Scott

  • Hi Whatispunk,

    >>>>>>>> Will you be able to use any of the tools in Expression Studio to build SL2 apps? Namely Expression Blend??

    Yes - you'll be able to use the full Expression suite of products to target SL2.

    Thanks,

    Scott

  • Hi Darin (and Martin),

    >>>>>>> Does Silverlight have the ability to capture audio from the user's microphone and send it back to the server to save as a file?

    Silverlight doesn't have this support just yet. It is something we are looking to enable in the future - but it isn't supported right now.

    Hope this helps,

    Scott

  • Hi Orlin,

    >>>>>>> I have been wondering about how a Silverlight application would support search engines. Or in general can you give us some guidance as to when to use Silverlight and when other Web technologies? Thanks much.

    We'll have more guidance and samples that show how to enable this in the future. It will be similar to how you make AJAX and Flash applications searchable.

    Hope this helps,

    Scott

  • Hi Ming,

    >>>>>> I hope it can on VWD 2008.......

    We'll also support Silverlight development with VWD 2008.

    Thanks,

    Scott

    ------------------------------------------
    Hi Scott,

    Does it mean, we shall be getting IronRuby support on VWD 2008 as well, since IronRuby is one of the 5 languages that works with silverlight.

    I am exited to read.... " YES from your side "

    Thanks

  • Hi Russ,

    >>>>>>>> 2. Can we have a Calendar control that can scale, using a fixed aspect ratio, from mini to large, and that can be sub-classed to provide other view types besides a grid?

    Yes - you can scale any control in Silverlight (including the Calendar control).

    Hope this helps,

    Scott

  • Hi Dave,

    >>>>>>>>> Will SL2 have deep linking support?

    Yes - we'll support that.

    Thanks,

    Scott

  • Hi Scott,

    Great work on this release. As you can tell by the response, we are all really excited to get it! When you say there will be socket support, will that include UDP? This is one thing missing from flash that would be extremely useful.

    Thanks.

  • Thanks for your response.
    I am from the business apps world and I am busting for this the amount of work it is going to generate I cannot describe this will make my Visual studio 6 clients upgrade.
    Thanks and thanks. I am just hoping that when you release beta 1 you will give us an idea of the RTM date as well. (but then nobody likes doing that)


  • Hi Scott,

    Will I get the full binding support for WCF in Beta1. I mean, can I use WSHttpBinding, WSDualHttpBinding, NetTcpBinding ...?

    Thanks

  • Scott,

    What about multiple Silverlight applications on a single page? How do they interact? In SL1.1 each app has it's own AppDomain. Is that going to be different in SL2? And what if multiple applications originate from different domains, can they interact? And what about different SL versions.

    Thanks a lot for a great intro on Silverlight 2. Can't wait.

    Koen Zwikstra

  • Hi Scott,

    An important - but too often overlooked - requirement for a good Ajax/ RIA user experience in the browser is graceful Back button handling, and more generally, good backward/forward navigation support.

    Will Silverlight 2.0 support NavigationService like WPF ?
    Will it be possible to intercept navigation events (Navigating, ...) ?
    Will Silverlight navigation support be nicelly integrated with browser Back/Forward buttons and history, like it is for WPF in IE7 ? (on all platforms ?)
    Will it be possible to control the browser journal, ie add/remove en (only in the scope of the Silverlight application off course) ?

    Thank you for your help,

    Laurent.

  • Scott,

    We are all excited and can't wait. However, please do not release SL2 unless the text edit control and the grid control are ready. We do not intend to "light up the web". Instead we have some serious business apps (yes, there is more to the web than just playing video) that need these controls.

    Thanks and keep up the good work.

  • Hi, Is is possible that "serial port" will be supported in latter sl version?

    We do need to use that feature but no RIA techniques support that which means we have to could not make our program run in browser unless we use ActiveX which I don't like.

  • Scott,

    Great job with these tutorials. Really good SL will suppport crossdomain.xml file - it does mean everything what is accessible from Flash/Flex will become available for SL.

    I have a question also - will Silverlight have the ability to measure size of text width/height with style applied? Maybe size of single characters? What about things like caret controlling?

    Oh and can't really wait to test SL2.0!

  • And one more question - I have noticed SL2.0 will give us socket connections. What are the limitations? In Flash/Flex there is no way to query sockets from range 1-1024 AFAIR. Is there the same limit in SL?
    Can you tell more about sockets?

  • Thanks for the tutorial Scott, just wondering if we could have something like a win32 forms hosting in WPF but for silverlight hosting in Win Forms and/or WPF?

    Cheers

  • Hi, Scott. Excellent stuff -- my team is looking forward to this.

    Question: will SL 2.0 support mouse wheel events? Current UI implementations in SL lack a lot of usability because it doesn't support this. Thanks!

  • Will 2.0 give us control over the In and Out point of a windows media file?

  • Thanks. other question: SL 1.1 needed Windows XP with SP2, and in Mac it needed an Intel processor. is this the same for SL 2??

    and will the Mono version of SL work in Mac without an intel proc?

    Thanks!!

  • Hi Scott, thanks for the info thus far - still curious about the following:

    1. Will SL2 support the DrawingBrush or the VisualBrush?
    2. What about 3D primitives?
    3. How quickly are we going to be able to get this 4MB cross-platform .net runtime running outside of the browser host? (a la adobe air) Also would be useful for automated testing purposes.

    Thanks,
    - John

  • Will the new version of Silverlight have support for RTMP?

  • Hi Scott,

    You write, "For browser security reasons we don't support drag/drop from the file-system into the browser (in the same way that Flash/Flex and AJAX don't allow this)." I'm curious what the security reasons are for preventing this. The only one I could foresee would be that someone dropped a file onto the browser that they meant to open, and it was accidently made available for upload. That seems pretty remote, so it would be really nice if it were an option to allow drag drop from the local file system(perhaps disabled by default.)

    On a side note, are there any plans for "enforced dogfooding" in regards to Silverlight usage. What I mean by this is this: I see a lot of Microsoft sponsored sites that use Flash for embedded video. What's really unfortunate is that it's not just older sites. The new WorldWide Telescope has a Flash video right on its homepage. Drives me nuts having to install Adobe's garbage to watch a Microsoft video.

    Thanks.

  • Hi Scott;
    I have two questions:
    a) Does SL 2.0 support the same "Routed Events" as WPF does?
    b) What features are going to be in 2.0, but are not going to make it in beta 1? This way I can design my work accordingly for beta 1 and future betas.

    Thanks!
    ..Ben

  • sockets , cross domain support, builtin controls ,excited to see the beta! any plan to include webcam and mic support, till now for that we need to use flash

  • Scott:

    Do you have an estimated date for Silverlight and WPF for Windows Mobile?

    Thanks
    Miguel

  • Scott,
    As a mostly business application developer, what I am praying for in Silverlight is a grid that one can easily copy and paste data from Excel into. And that could have many Excel features. So many of our users use Excel and just can't understand why a HTML based grid can't do those things well. Any idea what the capabilities might be for such a component in Silverlight?

  • The web never looked so good :-) Let's just hope we get 1st class support in VS and Blend.

  • Scott,

    I understand WF is not part of the silverlight distributable.
    What would be great is a way to distribute missing functionality yourself. So if you choose to want to bundle the assemblies with your application, you could.
    Perhaps (probably..) there are reasons WF will not run on the silverlight subset of .net. But if it could, I would like the opportunity to bundle it! ;-)

  • Hi, great news; I can't wait to get my hands on it.
    Still can't give a precise launch date? :)
    I am waiting for this beta to release a project...

  • Hi Scott,

    Thanks for the impressive tutorials.

    With Silverlight 2 becoming so rich, and getting some new features before WPF, what reasons are left to program with WPF 3.5? In which scenarii would WPF 3.5 be much better than Silverlight 2?

    Cedric

  • Hi Scott,

    How powerful is the sockets support in Silverlight going to be?
    Does it support both TCP and UDP?
    Can we connect on any port#?
    Can we have multiple sockets open at once with threading?
    Can we open a listening port?

    Any information would be great!

    Thanks

    Tim Kremer

  • Hi Scott;

    This is an answer you gave to someone else, and I was wondering if it was a typo or that is what you meant?
    >>Styles, Control Templates and DataTemplates are all in Beta2.<<

    Do you mean that Styles, Control Templates and data Templates won't be in Beta 1?
    Thanks!
    ..Ben

  • Thanks for the info Scott! I'll do more research with 1.1 Alpha (2.0 Beta 1) and see what I can come up with!

    Silverlight 2.0 is looking awesome. Can't wait for the release!

  • Hear, hear for client-side webcam support - preferrably with a SIP interface so that we can use it as a front-end for SIP based 2-way video applications.

    This would enable Silverlight to steal a lead over Adobe - who are expected to release SIP support later this year.

  • Obviously you guys are aware of Adobe AIR, which brings the technology in this space out of the browser and into the realm of desktop applications. This really changes the paradigm- Silverlight needs to run outside of the browser as well. This whole "migrate your browser app to WPF for the desktop" is a total non-starter in the context of the current competitive environment for RIA technology. If you don't believe me, go install AOL's music video application.

    Having said that, I think that an RIA runtime with a subset of the dot net framework makes a lot of sense and would be a formidable competitor to AIR.

  • Great stuff Scott! Will it ever be possible to host an SL app out of the browser (much like Adobe AIR) - perhaps to support disconnected-mode apps, or simply to manage in corporate environments so you don't have to worry about what happens when someone clicks on a back-button etc. It would be ideal to support in-browser and own-window SL apps.

    Thanks

  • Very good intruduction to Silverlight 2. I have not used Silverlight but I am going to change this in future. I like the concepts of this technology.

  • I heard the talk about Silverlight(XAML) Browser with advanced search capabilities. Is that true? Is Microsoft building a seperate XAML browser versus HTML browser? If it's true..Will IE8 and Silverlight browser be marketed seperately?? I think it's amazing and a great idea...It will definetly create a competive advantage..

  • Anyone who knows what Visual Studio theme Scott uses in his screenshots? Thanks in advance.

  • Eagerly waiting for the next big announcement :)

  • Scott,

    I was wondering if you guys are going to add camera access to SL2 or not.

  • Looking forward to getting my grubby mitts on it! :)

  • Will it be easy to uninstall current alpha and install this new beta?

  • will this improve my music, media, ect.?

  • Excellent post, we're all very excited about SL2. :D

  • I was reading in the comments above that we would be able to use VWD 2008 to develop Silverlight apps. The install for the tools is only for Visual Studio 2008. Any idea when it will be available to us poor people ;-)

  • Scott,

    you told that byte stream access is possible for images - for videos too? Am I able to manipulate the byte stream directly right before playback?

    Regards

    Sascha

  • Hello Scott.
    Does Silverlight 2 beta 1 includes a go-live license?

    Thanks

  • Hi Scott

    Thanx, this is beautiful!

    When is MIX coming to South Africa?

  • Yesterday I watched Microsoft Mix. They announced Silverlight 2. I am very impressed

  • Where can I download the Windows Mobile version of Silverlight 2? It's mentioned here http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/overview/mobile.aspx but there's no download link.
    Thanks.

  • is there a treeview control with silverlight 2.0 beta1, if not are u planning to release in future release?

  • Hi Scott,
    Mouse wheel scrolling is not supported in SL2?
    Also System.Data is not supporting, then how can we do database activities? Only with services?

    Thanks.

  • Hi Scott,

    I need to create an e-learning course that is supposed to be SCORM 1.2 compliant. Any ideas if this is currently supported in Silverlight? If not, when would this feature be incorporated?

    Regards,
    Samit

  • Hi Scott,
    Is the SL2 extends its foreign language support to double-bytes charactor code countries such as Japanese, Chinese and Korean, etc.?

    Thank you.

  • Hi scott,
    can we manage user indentity?
    Right click will support?
    will you give password box?

  • Hi,

    I think Silverlight 2.0 is a great thing.

    Will there be more controls?

    I would need combobox, tabview and treeview.

    Will they come?

    Best Regards

    Gerhard

  • It doesn't matter how good it is or how sophisticated the API you come up with. The truth is that Adobe has Flash and Flex and 90% of the market. Silverlight has 2% where 1% are people working for Microsoft.

  • Could someone please, please, please tell me how to set the Image Control's Source property in C#, it's driving me nutts!

  • Are we going to be getting a 64-bit compatible Silverlight some time in the near future? I prefer to use the 64-bit versions of IE7/8, and it'd be great if i didn't have to switch down to 32-bit to run Rilverlight!

  • Very informative.
    When is the Silverlight 2.0 final version likely to release?

  • Great info scott.
    I downloaded the beta, but I'm having trouble installing it on Vista x64. I had problems with the 1.1 version also and never got it to work on Firefox.
    Does the beta support Vista x64?

    Thanx

  • Please quit saying rich. I'm sure it's wonderful but find a new adjective. You and Bill Gates must talk too much :)

  • Section 508 compliance! Alright!

  • Hi Scott,

    thanks alot for sharing the information and waiting for the release of beta 2.

  • Hello Scott,

    any idea if SL2 will support XML digital signatures? For financial apps this is quite important and I was hoping we'd finally have a cross-platform way of doing this...

    Regards,
    Robert

  • Scott, I'm not sure if you'll respond to this due to the topic age but;

    In your topic you say:

    "It includes out of the box support for calling REST, WS*/SOAP, POX, RSS, and standard HTTP services. It supports cross domain network access (enabling Silverlight clients to directly access resources and data from resources on the web)."

    Right now, in terms of WCF communication, theres only BasicHttpBinding available.. I was quite surprised, I'm not sure if this just isn't done yet, or the web services communication of silverlight 2 will be somewhat crippled for its initial release.. or would it be a 'simple' matter of writing our own implementation of a WS* binding? if so, why? is it possible that silverlight 2 can come with a features that aren't nec deployed with the silverlight plugin.. but are instead deployed with the application, in the event they are used (such as like how the controls are included at the moment)

  • Hi,

    Great news. I'm really happy of the way the things are going.

    Still, I have one question. In future will Silverlight support video conference features?

    I've read some posts on the silverlight forum and for the moment is not possible without compromises.

    Thank you!

  • Thank you so much for this tutorial, Great job Scott. Is it possible to have this tutorial in a PDF file. This information is valuable.
    Thanks,
    Rachida

  • Does silverlight2 support Opengl or directx something.I could not found any topic on MSDN about this.
    thanks

  • I can't get my silverlight 2 web site to host on XP nor Server 2003. Is there a series of steps I have to go through to get this to work on IIS 5 or 6? Thanks.

  • I am trying to see if Silverlight 2 would play nice in a SOA architecture.
    SO I have a WCF Service layer (hiding other layers underneath...) and I want my client to be Silverlight 2.
    I got it to work , and doing Asynch calls. But I am not really sure that I am ok with the fact that I need to have a clientpolicy.xml on my service layer web host.
    So my question, if my client app is going to be available anywhere on the WEB, will I have to allow the whole world to access my service layer by allowing "*" in the client policy?
    ILIAS

  • It is very good approach for new web-based applications. I even think it is best that we have.
    HTML5 looks awful. It is better to use .Net applications with Silverlight ..

  • Does anybody know if Silverlight 2.0 final realease will have tree view control?

  • Scott,

    What is the roadmap voor silverlight 2.0 RTM?

  • Hi,

    I am really glad to see the control set in silver light 1.0, i have suffered with lack of control suffort... still i haven't seen any dropdown list in silverlight 2.0, Hope to see a full set of control in the release version of 2.0.

    Thanks & Best of Luck
    Md. Masudur Rahman

  • Dear Scott,
    did you already read this blog? It seems very important to me...are there any plans to fix it?
    http://devlicio.us/blogs/rob_eisenberg/archive/2008/03/13/there-s-some-darkness-in-your-silver-light.aspx

    Regards
    Matthias

  • Dear Scott,
    did you already read this blog? It seems very important to me...are there any plans to fix it?
    http://devlicio.us/blogs/rob_eisenberg/archive/2008/03/13/there-s-some-darkness-in-your-silver-light.aspx

    Regards
    Matthias

  • Hi Scott,

    This is good stuff! After playing around with the Silverlight 2 Beta for a few weeks now I do have some serious concerns with the graphic performance however.

    One of my tests was to create a ScrollViewer and insert a grid with 10000 rows and 3 columns inside of the ScrollViewer.

    The actual buildup of the structure was fast, but the rendering seems to be awfully slow (> 1 minute on my dual core). The same layout in HTML was rendered dynamically in AJAX in about 10 seconds.

    One of the main reasons for me considering Silverlight in the first place was its seemingly good graphics performance in other areas. Is this something you see your team improving immensely for the final release? I would suspect better than browser rendering performance for a system like Silverlight if it is to really take off over AJAX.

    Thanks for any insight you can provide.

    James

  • Scott,

    Will it be possible to execute a Silverlight2 application and have the user "believe" that he is using a Windows application?

    Let me explain. Several years back, Borland Delphi had tools that allowed for ActiveX controls to be loaded into IE, but with no IE title bar, menus, tool bars, or status bars showing. As far as the user was concerned, he was simply executing a standard Windows application, without any idea that the control was being downloaded (at least once) by IE from a web server.

    If this or similar capability is provided by Silverlight2, then I can code to a single API for both Web and desktop applications.
    If not, how hard would it be to get IE6/7/8 to get there from here? Finally, is Microsoft interested in such a capability?


  • Thanks for the info!

  • I just hope this will prove itself a viable alternative to Flash. Thanks for the examples :)

  • Thanks a lot! I am looking forward to learn a lot from your blogs. Is it possible to provide a printerfriendly version so that people like me can print them and can still study offline?

  • Since you have mentioned Globalization support for Silverlight 2.0, can you explain or direct me to any resource which explains how do I implement it.

  • Will Silverlight 2 provide counterparts for such ASP.NET features as Website Navigation and Authorization and Roles?

    For example, ASP.NET makes it easy to build sites that let users log in and then show only those pages to the user that they are authorized to see. Will Silverlight 2 provide similar features?

    If so, when would those features become available?



  • Paulo burn your windows 2000 pc and buy a new one! yo cant use a computer for so long, and expect to be update.

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