Today, during the MIX07 Keynote, Ray Ozzie and Scott Guthrie unveiled the .NET capabilities  of Silverlight and previews of the latest Expression Studio and Visual Studio tools for building Silverlight applications.

This announcements comes on the heels of the rich media functionality announced 2 weeks ago at the National Association of Broadcasters conference. Everyone who has worked on this project is elated, excited, ecstatic, energized, and euphoric with all the buzz and clear designer and developer interest around what we are delivering. [Check out: technorati, flickr, twitter, facebook)

With Silverlight we are changing the conversations people have ]bout building RIAs and  delivering rich media experiences in a broad, quick and easy way. No longer is it an either/or  proposition where you have to make tradeoffs between:

1. High-quality animation or performance
2. Developer/designer productivity or skills reuse
3. Broad audio/video reach or low cost of delivery

With a cross-platform implementation of .NE T at its core and Windows Media as its foundation, Silverlight turns each of the ORs above to ANDs.

1. You want high-quality, performant vector animation? Check.
2. Your developers and designers want an efficient workflow that allows them to reuse their existing skills and maintain creative control? Check.
3. You need to deliver your existing media assets at a low cost? Check.

Exciting times.

Go check out the latest Silverlight news at http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight.

Also, we have launched the Silverlight Community Site at http://www.silverlight.net where you can see demos, download samples and participate in the discussion on the Forums.