Last night the Silverlight team released the final version of Silverlight 2.0 (if you are interested, the official press release is here).

While I recommend you go to Tim Heuer’s post for full details about the new release, there are a few things I would like to point out:

• You will need to install Service Pack 1 for Visual Studio 2008
  
• If you want to use the express tools… you can now use Visual Web Developer Express and as such have a free development environment for Silverlight apps (and here as well, you will need the Service Pack 1)
  
• Blend 2.5 is no more… the official version required to design Silverligh 2 apps is called Expression Blend 2 Service Pack 1 which will install on top of the normal Expression Blend 2 and requires the .NET 3.5 Framework Service Pack 1
  
• Silverlight 2 DOES introduce some breaking changes from Beta 2 and sites developed for Beta 2 MOST LIKELY will not work with the final version

The last piece of news is that… Visual Studio is not anymore the only tool available to develop Silverlight applications. Continuing in the effort of providing support for the Open Source community, we are funding a venture to provide Silverlight Tools for Eclipse and you can find all the details on the project’s website:

http://www.eclipse4sl.org

In their own words:

Eclipse Tools for Microsoft Silverlight Project will integrate advanced Silverlight development capabilities into the Eclipse IDE and Eclipse Rich Client Platform (RCP).

• Increased Interoperability: Eclipse will contain functionality that will help Java Developers build Silverlight applications that work better with Java Web Services using REST, SOAP, JSON and other standards.
  
• Silverlight Project System and Silverlight Compiler: Eclipse will contain both an advanced project system for creating Silverlight applications and media experiences as well as a compiler for packaging Silverlight applications for deployment.
  
• XAML Editor & Preview with code hinting and code completion: Eclipse will contain an advanced, standards-compliant XAML editor with code hinting and code hinting features which helps detect and correct coding errors.
  
• Full compatibility with Microsoft's Development and Design Tools: The XAML and Silverlight projects created by Eclipse will be fully supported by both Microsoft Visual Studio and Microsoft Expression Studio tools.

So if you are familiar with Eclipse and want to give this a try, go to the project download page for the Alpha/Community Technology Preview.

Last but not least, we are also making  available the Silverlight XAML vocabulary via our Open Specification Promise.  We’ve done this with WPF XAML already and this is a great addition to enable other tool vendors and technologies to extend their applications to read/write XAML for Silverlight.