Silverlight 2 has been released and boasts many new features. Silverlight is a cross-platform RIA (Rich Internet Applications) platform designed to enhance the web experience. Silverlight allows developers to use a familiar set of tools and technologies to deploy functionality via the web. Silverlight also has the best capabilities for delivering video over the web including support for VC1 (HD Format) over the web and DRM (Digital Rights Management) for delivering copyrighted content over the web. Another great advantage is it's Isolated Storage which could allow things like client-side resizing of images, etc.
Some of the enhancements from previous versions includes an Embedded CLR with full 3.5 functionality and a Base Class Library, Rich UI framework (styles, animation, layout, data binding, skinning, etc.), new controls, Networking support (including WS/SOAP, REST, POX, RSS, HTTP, and sockets), and Rich Media Support for Videos, Images, Isolated Storage, etc.
Most of what I really wanted in Silverlight made it into the release so that makes me happy. I haven't seen if my plea to implement all of the data binding features WPF has was granted so I'll write a post when I find out.
Will you be using Silverlight over Flash in an upcoming project? Let me know about it!
Light Up The Web With Silverlight!
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