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:

• Silverlight 2 Developer Runtime (Windows)
• Silverlight 2 Developer Runtime (Mac)

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.

Tags: 2, AS3, eclipse, FLASH, IDE, MICROSOFT, SILVERLIGHT, sockets

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 14th, 2008 at 8:00 am and is filed under ARCHITECT, DEVELOPMENT, FLASH, FLEX, GAMEDEV, INTERACTIVE, INTERFACE, MARKET, MICROSOFT, PROGRAMMING, SILVERLIGHT, TECHNOLOGY, USER EXPERIENCE, XAML. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.