We're just wrapping up the final details for Silverlight 2 Beta 2. It should be available to download very very soon, so keep your eye on http://www.silverlight.net for details.

There's lots of new features in this release -- including, but not limited to:

• UI Framework -- we've made lots of improvements to the animation support, error handling, accessibility, keyboard input and general overall performance. This is intended to bring us more in line with WPF and improve overall compatibility between the two. It also allows your skills in one to more easily transfer to the other.
• Controls - We have a few new controls, such as a Tab control, as well as goodies like text wrapping and scrollbards for the TextBox and Autosize, Reorder, Sort etc. for the DataGrid.
• Networking and Communications -- Cross Domain is further improved over beta 1, the WebClient has been updated to allow uploads, and duplex communications ('push' from server to SL) have been added. This should make for some very interesting scenarios
• Deep Zoom -- this has been hugely updated. The file format is now XML instead of a binary format, so the ability to generate your own Deep Zoom images and collections server side will become easier. There's also some nice new event models around zoom/pan state.

More to follow...