News; Microsoft delivers near-final test version of Silverlight 5

Summary: Microsoft’s Silverlight 5 hit the Release Candidate milestone on September 1. The final delivery of the latest version of the technology is still set for later this year.

Microsoft rolled out to developers a near-final Release Candidate (RC) of Silverlight 5 on September 1.

The RC is a developer-only release with no go-live license. The final version of Silverlight 5 is still due out later this year.

Silverlight is Microsoft’s free web-browser plug-in that enables interactive media experiences, line of business applications and Windows Phone development.

In December 2010, Microsoft execs said Silverlight 5 would include 40 new features, the bulk of which are focused around making Silverlight a development platform for rich media and business applications.Microsoft Office delivered a beta of Silverlight 5 in April 2011.

Features new to the Silverlight 5 RC since the beta release include:

•P/Invoke support for calling native functions

•64 bit support

•Vector (Postscript) Printing

•Remote Control and Media Command Support

•DataContextChanged event

•In-Browser Trusted Applications

•PivotViewer Control

•Power awareness for media apps

Microsoft is expected to say more about the future of Silverlight at the Build conference in mid-September in Anaheim. For those whose Silverlight sales and deployments have been hurt by Microsoft’s reluctance to be clear about Silverlight’s role in Windows 8 and other products/services, Build can come none too soon.

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