Silverlight 2.0 Set to Arrive Soon (Can't wait for Mix 08)

by Don Burnett

Over at Scott Gutherie's Blog, he has released a series of first articles (and code samples) on Silverlight 2.0.. Since this information is released publicly I thought it would be nice to talk a little bit about it here and the important things for our community to know about it.

What is Silverlight 2.0?? 

Quoting Scott on his blog "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 solutions."

What features have been added that improve on Silverlight 1.0's functionality?

Again quoting Scott's Blog:

"

• 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.

"

Wow he said it, databound controls, i.e.,  DataGrids, Listbox, etc.. This will change the face of Silverlight applications almost immediately. Networking support including all major web service protocols, cross-domain access and "socket" support.. This rocks. Especially considering this is all CROSS-Platform..  He also mentions things like threading, generics, collections, storage and LINQ support..

If you have never heard of LINQ it stands for Language INtegrated Query and lets you code things you'd normally have to use stored procedures for and gives you very secure ways to access data from XML and other sources..

He also goes further to do a great six part tutorial on how to create a sample "Digg" application in Silverlight, then in parallel with a platform-dependent version using WPF to show the parallels of creating an application..

I would say if you are familiar with Silverlight 1.0 the important reads are

Part2: Using Layout Management

Part 3: Using Networking to Retrieve Data and Populate a DataGrid

Part 6: Using User Controls to Implement Master/Detail Scenarios

Part 7: Using Control Templates to Customize a Controls Look and Feel

All of these are very NEW topics to Silverlight Designers and Developers and Scott walks through them very thoroughly and it's a very easy read. The functionality added with Silverlight 2.0 really underscores the commitment made to the Silverlight platform itself. With the new controls, databinding and cross-platform functionality. It's a new day for Silverlight where real Rich Interactive Applications are possible from inside a web browser with services that the built-in framework provides the plug-in that haven't been available to web applications developers before. Web applications will now have most of the power of desktop applications. Also, due to the cross-platform nature of Silverlight 2.0, your customers will not worry about what OS you are running..

Technorati tags: Silverlight 2.0, databinding, webservices, styling, user controls, control templating, layout management