Silverlight 3.0 Beta was unveiled at Mix09 yesterday, along with a preview of Expression Blend 3.0.

The list of new features being released in the products is nothing short of impressive. This article at Wired Magazine does a good job of going through the main features, but if you’re short on time, the highlights are as follows:

Silverlight:

  • HD Streaming of 720p without buffering
  • Standalone application support (aka out of browser!)
  • Hardware acceleration
  • 3D visual features
  • Multi-touch support
  • Eclipse for Silverlight support on the Mac

Expression Blend:

  • Sketchflow feature allows for quick prototyping of workflow by defining states and transitions between states
  • Import files directly from Adobe Illustrator/Photoshop
  • Export workflow to an automatically generated Word document

If you’ve been holding off trying out Silverlight, this seems like a great time to take a closer look!