At today's TechEd keynote, BillG announced Silverlight 2 Beta 2 will be available later this week. Silverlight 2 Beta 2 will include:

  • UI Framework: Beta 2 includes improvements in animation support, error handling and reporting, automation and accessibility support, keyboard input support, and general performance.  This release also provides more compatibility between Silverlight and WPF.
  • Rich Controls: Beta 2 includes a new templating model called Visual State Manager that allows for easier templating for controls. Other features include the introduction of TabControl, text wrapping and scrollbars for TextBox, and for DataGrid additions include Autosize, Reorder, Sort, performance increases and more.  Most controls are now in the runtime instead of packaged with the application.
  • Networking Support: Beta 2 includes improved Cross Domain support and security enhancements, upload support for WebClient, and duplex communications (“push” from server to Silverlight client).
  • Rich Base Class Library: Beta 2 includes improved threading abilities, LINQ-to-JSON, ADO.NET Data Services support, better support for SOAP, and various other improvements to make networking and data handling easier.
  • Deep Zoom: Beta 2 introduces a new XML-based file format for Deep Zoom image tiles, as well as a new MultiScaleTileSource that enables existing tile databases to utilize Deep Zoom. Better, event driven notification for zoom/pan state is another improvement in Silverlight 2 Beta 2. 

Since I own "Rich Controls", I am mainly going to focus on that. For Beta 2, here are some of the new stuff we've added:

  • New control: TabControl
  • New features for Calendar. Some examples: Multi-Selection and disjoint non-Selectable Date support.
  • New features for DataGrid. Some examples: Multi Column Sorting, End User Column Reordering, Auto sizing, Performance enhancements and  Frozen columns.

I'll be going into more details and demos at my talk on Friday. Come and see!

Details about my session:
WUX10-TLC Tips, Tricks, and Techniques for Building a Great Microsoft Silverlight Application
Friday, June 6 4:30 PM - 5:45 PM, Blue Theater 2 
Speaker(s): Kathy Kam
Track(s): Web and User Experience
Level: 300 - Advanced
Session Type: Interactive Theaters