imageNot a long time ago, Microsoft released Silverlight 3 in July, and today at PDC, Microsoft has released Silverlight 4 to public beta. Silverlight is a technology for Rich Internet Applications. Silverlight 4 has several features for developers to create better RIA applications. This release for Silverlight has major additions.

Apart from ability to develop rich web applications, developers can also drag and drop Office documents directly into the Silverlight development interface and print from the UI. Some other new features for Silverlight 4 are official support for the Google Chrome browser , fully cooperates with Visual Studio 2010, SharePoint and Office and it has also ability to use  Flash inside of Silverlight, so an app could play YouTube videos, for example. Webcam, microphone and multicast support is also built in to Silverlight 4.

Today at the Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles, Scott Guthrie, corporate vice president of the .NET Developer Platform, demonstrated many new features of Silverlight 4.

New Features for Application Developers (as by the official site)

  • Comprehensive printing support enabling hardcopy reports and documents as well as a virtual print view, independent of screen content.
  • A full set of forms controls with over 60 customizable, styleable components. New controls include RichTextbox with hyperlinks, images and editing and Masked textbox for complex field validation. Enhanced controls include DataGrid with sortable/resizeable columns and copy/paste rows.
  • WCF RIA Services introduces enterprise class networking and data access for building n-tier applications including transactions, paging of data, WCF and HTTP enhancements.
  • Localization enhancements with Bi-Directional text, Right-to-Left support and complex scripts such as Arabic, Hebrew and Thai and 30 new languages.
  • The .NET Common Runtime (CLR) now enables the same compiled code to be run on the desktop and Silverlight without change.
  • Enhanced databinding support increases flexibility and productivity through data grouping/editing and string formatting within bindings.
  • Managed Extensibility Framework supports building large composite applications.
  • Exclusive tooling support for Silverlight, new in Visual Studio 2010. Including a full editable design surface, drag & drop data-binding, automatically bound controls, datasource selection, integration with Expression Blend styling resources, Silverlight project support and full IntelliSense.

Download Links:-
Silverlight Toolkit
Silverlight 4 Beta Tools for Visual Studio 2010
Windows Runtime or Mac Runtime  
Microsoft Expression Blend for .NET 4 Preview
WCF RIA Services
Online Silverlight 4 Beta Documentation
Offline CHM help Silverlight 4 Beta Documentation file download