A Guide to the Newly-Released Developer Updates

Though I managed to sneak away for some vacation time this week, it's clearly been a busy time for the product teams.  Here's a summary of the recently-released betas and updates with links for more information: 

Silverlight

• Silverlight 1.0 Release Candidate (windows|mac)
• Silverlight 1.1 Alpha Refresh (windows|mac)

Details on Tim Sneath's blog.
Here's a useful guide to the Silverlight versions and supporting tools.

Expression

• Expression Blend 2 August Preview
• Expression Media Encoder Preview Update

Both include support for Silverlight 1.0 RC.
Details on the Expression Site.

Visual Studio & .NET Framework

• Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2
• .NET Framework 3.5 Beta 2

Now include "Go Live" license.
Full details in Scott Guthrie's post.
Scott Hanselman (BTW, now a Microsoft employee) has a simplified installation guide.

ASP.NET Futures

• ASP.NET Futures July Update

Includes Silverlight support (asp:Media, asp:Xaml), AJAX extensions, application services, dynamic language support, and dynamic data controls.
Soma describes the release on his blog.
More details on Brad Abrams' blog (second half of the post).

Ajax Control Toolkit

• AJAX Control Toolkit pdate

Update to support the Beta 2's of VS2008 and .NET 3.5.
Details on Delay's blog.

IronRuby

• IronRuby Pre Alpha source preview

John Lam has the details.
Scott Guthrie has a helpful introduction/tutorial.

IronPython

• IronPython 2.0 Alpha 3

Dino Viehland's announcement [via PLNews.org]

F#

• F# Language v1.9.2.7 release (MSI/Windows | ZIP/Mono)

Don Syme's announcement of v1.9.2.7
Don Syme with the full release notes
F# Overview (i.e. why you may be interested)

Enjoy your explorations!

-Chris