Silverlight 2 has been released. This is the real silverlight release. The release last year 1.0 was just a javascript release and only had one object, the downloader, not even a text input. But now there are real tools like rich ui controls, services support (REST), DLR (C#, Linq, ironpython/ruby) and Sockets which are much needed for games and game platform development.
There are also much better tools at this stage:
Bam. Silverlight 2 is out. There’s the expected stuff, like the final SDK, Expression, and Silverlight tools:
- Microsoft Silverlight 2 SDK
- Expression Blend 2 SP1
- Silverlight Tools for Visual Studio 2008 SP1
- Deep Zoom Composer
And from Tim’s blog:
But there’s also http://www.eclipse4sl.org/. Yes, that means you can code Silverlight in Eclipse. Details and progress at the Eclipse Tools for Silverlight Blog. It’ll be licensed under the EPL 1.0 License.
I have done lots of Silverlight initially when 1.0 came out as well as the agency I was working at. We did video players, mini-games, demo apps and even the Halo 3 online manual at silverlight.net. But it wasn’t really ready until now. It still has a long way to go to really be an alternative to Flash but it is capable platform at version 2 for applications, mini-games and video apps for sure. But in the end it just provides competition to make both the Flash/Flex platforms and Silveright compete for developer support.
October 15, 2008 at 2:43 am
How much does Blend cost? They’d probably do well to give it away for free for a while, like they do with Visual Studio Express, etc. Still waiting to see the first Silverlight app that makes me go “Wow that’s cool!”
October 15, 2008 at 9:10 am
Yeh it is pretty expensive. You can also dev with visual studio and eclipse but Blend is a fully integrated timeline like environment like the flash IDE.