Silverlight, Visual Studio 2008 and Expression Blend
What do these products have in common? Well they just moved one step closer to being released. And if you are a rabid early adopter junkie (REAJunk) like myself this is great news.
Silverlight is a cross-platform, cross-browser plug-in for delivering media experiences and rich interactive applications (RIAs) for the Web. Silverlight 1.0 Release Candidate is the last milestone before the final release later this year. The Silverlight 1.0 RC is “feature complete”. Silverlight 1.1 Alpha has been refreshed. Not that the previous Silverlight 1.1 Alpha timed bombed out on August 1st. Visit the Silverlight site to get the latest runtimes, SDKs, documentation, samples and tools.
Expression Blend is the professional design tool to create engaging web-connected experiences for Windows. IN the latest version, Expression Blend August Preview, there is support for WPF, Silverlight 1.0 and Silverlight 1.1 projects as well as integration with Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2. Download the August Preview here.
The next version of Visual Studio, Visual Studio 2008, will provide an industry-leading developer experience for .Net Framework 3.5, 3.0 and 2.0 based applications that target Windows, Office, and the Web. There is direct support for Silverlight development with this beta release. You can download the beta here.
