If Windows Azure was the big topic on day 1 of the PDC conference in LA. For me Silverlight 4 was certainly the big topic of day 2.
Scott Guthrie introduced Silverlight 4 during the keynote and showed some of the enhancements that are being introduced to the new version of the platform.
Tim Heuer has done a great job blogging Silverlight 4 Beta – A complete guide to the new features this blog post includes all the tools you need to download to build on Silverlight 4 so I recommend you start there.
In addition to this a number of other resources have been made available as well during PDC:
Channel 9 Launched a Silverlight 4 Training Course
The Silverlight 4 Training Course includes hands-on-labs, a video and a whitepaper designed to help you learn about the new features in Silverlight 4 focusing on three major areas: Enabling Business Application Development, Empowering Richer Experiences and Moving Beyond the Browser.
Also Channel 9 has published a video Rundown of Silverlight 4 Beta
Key Tweets from @follesoe:
I think today will go down in history as the date Silverlight goes mainstream for majority of .NET devs holding off. #pdc09 - 10:03 AM Nov 18th Share assemblies without separate compile step between SL4 and .NET 4. Great for Silverlight 4 #TDD and #MVVM. #pdc09 - 9:48 AM Nov 18th
I think today will go down in history as the date Silverlight goes mainstream for majority of .NET devs holding off. #pdc09 - 10:03 AM Nov 18th
Share assemblies without separate compile step between SL4 and .NET 4. Great for Silverlight 4 #TDD and #MVVM. #pdc09 - 9:48 AM Nov 18th
Another key area of interest for me is the enhancements in IIS Media streaming technology. During the keynote Scott (attempted) to preview a sneak peak of publishing smooth streaming video content from IIS to an iphone leveraging the HTML 5 <video/> tag.
If you have an iphone you can try for yourself by visiting http://iis.net/iphone there is more detail about the advancements in the IIS media services in Vishal Sood’s PDC session Building Live Media Viewing Experiences Using Internet Information Services (IIS) Smooth Streaming and the Smooth Streaming Player SDK.
Also Karen Corby did a great job presenting an Overview of Silverlight 4 session at PDC (video).
There are lots of Silverlight related session available for download now. Some highlights include:
CL06 Networking and Web Services in Silverlight Yavor Georgiev WMV WMVHigh Slides
CL07 Mastering Microsoft .NET RIA Services Dinesh Kulkarni WMV WMVHigh Slides
CL35 Custom Behaviors for Advanced Microsoft Silverlight UI Effects Peter Blois WMV WMVHigh Slides
CL20 NEW: Improving and Extending the Sandbox with Microsoft Silverlight 4 Joe Stegman WMV WMVHigh
CL21 Building Amazing Business Applications with Microsoft Silverlight and Microsoft .NET RIA Services Brad Abrams WMV WMVHigh Slides
CL01 NEW TITLE: Microsoft Silverlight 4 Overview Karen Corby WMV WMVHigh MP4 Slides
CL30 Microsoft Expression Blend 3 for Developers: Tips, Tricks and Best Practices DoRon Motter WMV WMVHigh Slides
CL36 Deep Dive on Bing Maps Silverlight Control Keith Kinnan WMV WMVHigh Slides
Lots of content to consume and now that Silverlight is installed on around 45% of internet using computers around the world it is a great time to start considering using it for your next project.