This post originated from an RSS feed registered with .NET Buzz by Ashish Shetty. Original Post: Beta 2 of Silverlight 2 has just shipped Feed Title: Even a chimp can write code Feed URL: http://nerddawg.blogspot.com/rss.xml Feed Description: Ideas on software and elsewhere by Ashish Shetty: erstwhile chimp and occasional re-inventor of the wheel. Latest .NET Buzz Posts Latest .NET Buzz Posts by Ashish Shetty Latest Posts From Even a chimp can write code

• Animation
  1. Support for animating custom data points
  2. Object Animation support (animating structs)
• Deep Zoom
  1. New XML-based file format
  2. MultiScaleTileSource to wire up your own images and get the Deep Zoom experience
  3. Better notifications when sub-images enter the view
• Controls
  1. Customize the look and feel of controls using Visual State Manager. Interactive control templates were never so easy.
  2. Some base controls are now part of the core platform, rather than packaged into apps. Say hello to smaller app sizes.
  3. Calendar now supports multi-selection and blackout dates
  4. New TabControl
  5. Control properties changes (Background, Tooltip, FontFamily, FontSize…)
  6. DataGrid improvements: auto size, reorder, sort, performance and more
• TextBox
  1. IME Level 3 input support
  2. Text wrapping and multiline selection highlighting in textbox
  3. Scrolling and clipboard support
  4. Document level navigation keys
• Improvements in error handling, reporting
• Parser and Property system
  1. DependencyProperty.Register/RegisterAttached now supports PropertyMetadata
  2. New DependencyObject.ClearValue
  3. Visual tree helper
• Data-binding
  1. Per binding level validation
  2. Support for element syntax for binding markup extensions
  3. Binding to attached properties
  4. ItemsControl extensibility (OnItemsChanged method)
  5. Fallback in value conversion (Binding.UnsetValue)
• Input
  1. Support for limited keyboard input in Full Screen mode (arrow, tab, enter, home, end, pageup/pagedown, space). I've seen more than a few requests for this on the forums.
  2. Managed APIs for Inking and stylus input
• Networking and Data
  1. Cross Domain support in Sockets
  2. Cross Domain security enhancements
  3. HttpWebRequest and WebClient callable from background threads
  4. Upload support in WebClient
  5. Isolated Storage: default size increased to 1MB and new ability to change quota with user consent. Also a new management UI.
  6. Duplex communications ("push" from server to Silverlight client with no need to "poll" for data)
  7. LINQ -to- JSON serialization
  8. Significantly improved SOAP interop
  9. "Add New Item" template in Visual Studio for "Silverlight-enabled WCF Service"
  10. ADO.NET Data Services support
• UIAutomation and Accessibility support in the platform
• Media
  1. Platform support for Adaptive Streaming (also referred to by people as multi bitrate), the ability for Silverlight to switch between media depending on network and CPU conditions
  2. Content protection with PlayReady DRM and Windows DRM
  3. Basic server-side playlist (SSPL) support
• Localization
  1. Changes to localized application model. You now create one xap per locale, instead of one monolithic multilingual app
  2. Expanded localization languages of runtime and SDK
  3. Japanese SDK Installer and documentation (July 10)
• Several changes to make API and behavior more compatible with WPF
• Tools
  1. Beta 1 projects will be automatically ported to Beta 2
  2. Remote debugging for VB on the Mac
• CLR
  1. A new developer-oriented runtime package with debugging binaries, localized strings, docs etc.
  2. Support for OS fallback logic for resources
  3. CurrentCulture and CurrentUICulture isolation to AppDomain level
• DLR
  1. Performance improvements
  2. Various new DLR and IronPython 2.0 Beta 2 language features
  3. Various new IronRuby features

We're not quite done for Silverlight 2, but are getting really close. There's some ongoing work to get more controls delivered (Scott has said the expectation was to ship over 100 controls) at and beyond RTW. I know people have asked for ComboBox and PasswordBox. We'll also have per-frame callback support (CompositionTarget.Rendering event) to light up those physics animation scenarios you're dreaming of, and further accessibility work on controls, improvements to PNG support in imaging, among other things. Needless to say, the focus from here on will be to stabilize and ship a solid product.

I hope you like what we've cooked. Please keep that feedback coming. Without you this would not be possible and be quite meaningless.

Further content:

• Get Silverlight 2 Beta 2 now!
• Breaking changes between Silverlight 2 Beta 1 and Beta 2
• Install Beta 2 tools for Visual Studio 2008
• Silverlight 2 Beta 2 documentation on MSDN
• Scott Guthrie: Silverlight 2 Beta 2 released