Silverlight 5 – Microsoft will provide assisted and unassisted no charge support for customers using versions of Silverlight 5. Paid support options are available to customers requiring support with issues beyond install and upgrade issues. Microsoft will continue to ship updates to the Silverlight 5 runtime or Silverlight 5 SDK, including updates for security vulnerabilities as determined by the MSRC. Developers using the Silverlight 5 development tools and developing applications for Silverlight 5 can use paid assisted-support options to receive development support.

Silverlight 5 will support the browser versions listed on this page through 10/12/2021, or though the support lifecycle of the underlying browsers, whichever is shorter. As browsers evolve, the support page will be updated to reflect levels of compatibility with newer browser versions.

Get Silverlight 5

Silverlight is a powerful development tool for creating engaging, interactive user experiences for Web and mobile applications. Silverlight is a free plug-in, powered by the .NET framework and compatible with multiple browsers, devices and operating systems, bringing a new level of interactivity wherever the Web works.

SILVERLIGHT 5, as shown at MIX in Las Vegas

This sample shows a full 3D realtime engine with some advanced features and an integrated collisions system.

The engine provides support for:
•Collisions
•Diffuse channel
•Ambient channel
•Textures (including light maps)
•Per-pixel & per-vertex shader
•Models/cameras and lights

While Silverlight didn’t get the leading role in either the day one or day two Mix ‘11 keynotes (much to the chagrin of some developers), there was some Silverlight news at the Microsoft developer/designer conference.

Microsoft is making available a public beta of its Silverlight 5 development tool/runtime, as of April 13. The beta will be available at http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight.

In December, Microsoft officials outlined some of the 40 new features the company planned to deliver with Silverlight 5, the final version of which is due out before the end of calendar 2011. The bulk of those features are focused around making Silverlight a development platform for rich media and business applications.

At Mix, Corporate Vice President of .Net Scott Guthrie’s comment “Let’s switch gears now and talk about Silverlight for the browser,” got huge applause from the Mix ‘11 keynote attendees. (Microsoft officials said this fall, the company’s cross-platform runtime play is morphing, with HTML5 being the new way the Redmondians plan to tackle the cross-platform challenge, going forward — a positioning statement that left many Silverlight developers feeling abandoned.)

Microsoft execs detailed on April 13 more of the features coming with Silverlight 5. Among those features:

• Reduced network latency by using a background thread for networking.
• XAML parser improvements that speed up startup and runtime performance.
• Support for 64-bit operating systems
• The ability to do some of the “trusted” features in Silverlight in the browser

The full list of Silverlight 5 features is here.

A number of these features are not in the beta, but which are still on tap for Silverlight 5, according to Microsoft, including vector printing, power awareness for things like full-screen apps, fluid user-interface transitions and 64-bit support for the plug-in, among others.

Microsoft execs also said at Mix ‘11 that full Silverlight 4 support is coming to the Windows Phone 7 platform with the Mango update coming this fall. Microsoft execs also demonstrated Silverlight and XNA melded together, allowing developers in the Mango timeframe to use a combination of the two tools when writing a single app.

...The bulk of those features are focused around making Silverlight a development platform for rich media and business applications...

Inside Visual Studio LightSwitch

Microsoft Visual Studio LightSwitch uses a model-centric architecture for defining, building, and executing a 3-tier LightSwitch application.

A model-centric architecture uses models to describe the structure and semantics of an end-to-end application. The applications that you build with LightSwitch have a traditional N-tier architecture.

In this article we discuss the LightSwitch model-centric approach and the main elements of a LightSwitch model. We’ll also look at the runtime architecture tiers (presentation, service, and data) and how they relate to the model.

If you haven't taken a look at LightSwitch yet, this could be a good starting point. I have written an admin client for an application that I am developing, following my usual datacentric approach, and I am amazed at how easy it is to implement vrey functional, 3-tier solutions.

Best rich Internet application development platform

In Silverlight we trust :-)

More on Microsoft 'Jupiter' and what it means for Windows 8

By Mary Jo Foley | January 6, 2011, 12:37pm PST

Summary

After a first tip this week on Microsoft’s Jupiter — a new “application model” for Windows 8 — I started nosing around to learn more about this mysterious new Microsoft codename. Here’s a brain dump of what I learned after talking to a couple of sources of mine who spoke on the condition of anonymity, but whom I believe are in the know about the project.

Jupiter is going to be a new user interface (UI) library for Windows, built alongside Windows 8. It will be a thin XAML/UI layer on top of Windows application programming interfaces and frameworks for subsystems like graphics, text and input. The idea is Jupiter will bring support for smoother and more fluid animation, rich typography, and new media capabilities to Windows 8 devices. (Not surprisingly, the more fluid UI capabilities also are on the feature set list for Silverlight 5.)

The high-level goal for Jupiter is to help Microsoft revitalize a world where developers write applications tailored for a specific platform. The days of “killer apps” optimized for Windows driving demand for Windows PCs are waning (if not already long gone). Microsoft’s hope with Jupiter is to provide Microsoft and third-party developers with a new framework, plus the next versions of Microsoft’s various development tools, to build what Microsoft is calling “immersive” applications.

Immersive apps are not meant to be Windows desktop apps. Nor are they necessarily pure Web apps. They are applications that will be built using C#, Visual Basic (and maybe C ). These apps will be developed using the new Windows 8 app model and take advantage of its inherent servicing and packaging technologies and that will be available via the anticipated Windows 8 app store.

Because Jupiter will be built off the same core XAML technology used in Windows Phone and Silverlight, there’s a good chance some of the Silverlight code developers already have written will be able to be reused to develop this new class of apps. Does this mean Windows Phone apps will automatically work on Windows 8 and be available from the Windows 8 app store? I don’t know but I am doubtful.

One of my contacts described Jupiter this way: “It has to do with XAML Native Code on slate/iPad-like devices. I think this is Microsoft’s approach for putting Windows on the smaller device without the bloat.”

For now, Jupiter is supposedly a Windows 8 thing only, but could potentially be adapted to work with older versions of Windows and maybe Windows Embedded operating systems, as well. Jupiter will actually ship as part of Windows 8, I am hearing from my contacts. A subset of Jupiter also will ship as part of a future version of the .Net Framework, according to what my sources said of Microsoft’s plans.

Microsoft officials are not commenting on Jupiter. That’s not too surprising, as we heard from Microsoft execs at this week’s Consumer Electronics Show, they aren’t even willing to acknowledge that Windows 8 is what they’re calling the next version of Windows….

Any Windows, Windows Phone and/or Silverlight developers out there have any thoughts to add (or questions to ask) about Jupiter? I, for one, am curious whether Jupiter will be part of Windows 8 on both the newly announced SoC ARM/AMD/Intel systems and existing generation of 32/64-bit PCs or not…

 

These are rumors, only rumors, lovely rumors...
(Everything that contains XAML and Silverlight is lovely!)

Microsoft Silverlight Media Framework 2.3 (SMFv2.3)

Want to learn more? Check out the SMF "How To" Documentation for videos, online examples, sample code and more!

Overview

What is the Microsoft Silverlight Media Framework?

Microsoft's open source Silverlight Media Framework enables developers to quickly deploy a robust, scalable, customizable media player for IIS Smooth Streaming delivery. The SMF builds on the core functionality of the Smooth Streaming Client (formerly known as the "Smooth Streaming Player Development Kit") and adds a large number of additional features, including an extensibility API that allows developers to create plugins for the framework. The SMF also now includes full support for Windows Phone 7 so developers can incorporate high-end video playback experiences in their Windows Phone 7 applications.

The SMF is built on a proven code base with dozens of leading Smooth Streaming deployments, including Wimbledon, Sunday Night Football on NBCSports, the UEFA Super Cup on Canal+, Roland Garros and the Tour de France on France Télévisions and many others and by providing developers with source code they can more easily build these experiences for their deployments. Key features in the framework include DVR, rewind, alternate language tracks, in-stream data feeds and analytics tracking. The SMF is designed for future third-party extensibility and component modularity, as well as support for other media delivery scenarios beyond Smooth Streaming.

New in version 2.x

The SMFv2 release introduces a whole new, more modular architecture with an extensive plug-in API for 3rd-party developers and partners. It will also enable developers to selectively exclude libraries that aren't needed in their projects in order to avoid unnecessary file size increases. The v2 framework will include plug-ins for Timed Text (DFXP),URL frame linking, a metadata framework, support for the Microsoft Silverlight Analytics Framework, support for multiple audio tracks, improved bitrate monitoring, support for Silverlight 4 global styling, a JavaScript API, a logging plug-in, and a host of other new features. It also takes advantage of the new Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF) in Silverlight 4. More information in this thread...

Update @ 3:30pm (11/2): Because there’s been confusion on this announcement, we want to make clear that this announcement was around the end of life of the 3D Map control. 3D Maps is not based on Silverlight and this announcement has nothing to do with our commitment to Silverlight. We continue to invest in Silverlight functionality, which delivers the richest possible experience for our users - specifically through our map apps that run in the browser on the PC and the Silverlight map control for Windows Phone 7 applications.

A bit old but still helpful to remove some of the misunderstandings around Bing committment to Silverlight.

Resource Page Description
While Silverlight 4 supports accessing COM automation components from elevated trust OOB applications, many Windows platform features are currently not available through COM automation. This makes them inaccessible to such Silverlight OOB apps. Native Extensions for Microsoft Silverlight(NESL) is an effort to incrementally build a library of components that expose select Windows 7 features through COM automation, making them easily available to Silverlight 4 OOB applications running with elevated trust. The current version of NESL provides access to Windows 7 features like Sensors, Portable Devices, Speech, Taskbar and more. NESL is made up of a set of COM automation based runtime libraries, Silverlight wrapper libraries usable from Silverlight 4 OOB applications, sample applications with source, API documentation, and a developer's guide.

What APIs are covered in NESL v1 ?

• Windows Sensor API
  • Integrate sensors in you Silverlight app – Accelerometers, Light sensors, compasses, gyroscopes etc.
• Microsoft Speech API
  • Text to Speech (Speech Synthesis)
  • Speech to Text (Speech Recognition)

Windows Portable Devices API

• Enumerate and access content from connected portable devices (cameras, phones, music players, scanners etc.)

Windows 7 Taskbar Integration

• Jump lists, overlay icons, overlay progress display, Thumbnail toolbars etc.

Webcam Local Encoding and Window Capture

• Encode webcam capture into mp4 (H.264/AAC-LC) media
• Capture user interface interaction as video

Window Message Interception

• Intercept and act on Window messages sent to the Silverlight OOB host window