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Silverlight 2 Beta 2 will be available later this week

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At today's TechEd keynote, BillG announced Silverlight 2 Beta 2 will be available later this week. Silverlight 2 Beta 2 will include:

  • UI Framework: Beta 2 includes improvements in animation support, error handling and reporting, automation and accessibility support, keyboard input support, and general performance.  This release also provides more compatibility between Silverlight and WPF.
  • Rich Controls: Beta 2 includes a new templating model called Visual State Manager that allows for easier templating for controls. Other features include the introduction of TabControl, text wrapping and scrollbars for TextBox, and for DataGrid additions include Autosize, Reorder, Sort, performance increases and more.  Most controls are now in the runtime instead of packaged with the application.
  • Networking Support: Beta 2 includes improved Cross Domain support and security enhancements, upload support for WebClient, and duplex communications (“push” from server to Silverlight client).
  • Rich Base Class Library: Beta 2 includes improved threading abilities, LINQ-to-JSON, ADO.NET Data Services support, better support for SOAP, and various other improvements to make networking and data handling easier.
  • Deep Zoom: Beta 2 introduces a new XML-based file format for Deep Zoom image tiles, as well as a new MultiScaleTileSource that enables existing tile databases to utilize Deep Zoom. Better, event driven notification for zoom/pan state is another improvement in Silverlight 2 Beta 2. 

Since I own "Rich Controls", I am mainly going to focus on that. For Beta 2, here are some of the new stuff we've added:

  • New control: TabControl
  • New features for Calendar. Some examples: Multi-Selection and disjoint non-Selectable Date support.
  • New features for DataGrid. Some examples: Multi Column Sorting, End User Column Reordering, Auto sizing, Performance enhancements and  Frozen columns.

I'll be going into more details and demos at my talk on Friday. Come and see!

Details about my session:
WUX10-TLC Tips, Tricks, and Techniques for Building a Great Microsoft Silverlight Application
Friday, June 6 4:30 PM - 5:45 PM, Blue Theater 2 
Speaker(s): Kathy Kam
Track(s): Web and User Experience
Level: 300 - Advanced
Session Type: Interactive Theaters

Comments

  • Anonymous
    June 03, 2008
    What about combobox? There isn't any in beta 1, there will be one in beta 2?

  • Anonymous
    June 03, 2008
    Sounds exciting especially the DataGrid features! Will there be sample applications and documentation to help us learn these cool new features?  

  • Anonymous
    June 03, 2008
    Will a combobox be included? Also, will it be possible to skin SL controls to look like ASP.NET controls - as in their 'raw' state? Think that's going to be vital as web apps 'blend in' the new technology. The same flexibility is surely required of WPF controls to look like WinForm controls, and I'm assuming SL controls will appear identical to their non-skinned WPF counterparts.

  • Anonymous
    June 03, 2008
    Unfortunately, ComboBox will not be available in Beta 2 either. I'll discuss this futher at my talk on Friday. Regarding the default look: The Silverlight controls will have its unique default look which will be different from WPF. The controls are totally skinnable and you should be able to skin it to look like whatever you want. Samples like the one I wrote previously will be published once Silverlight 2 Beta 2 ships.

  • Anonymous
    June 04, 2008
    Would we have menu and toolbar controls as well? Also, how would we navigate from one page/form to the other and back in SL? Hope its like that of winforms where each form is a class and we can call its show method to display it  while still preserving the  values in the controls on the previous form (calling its close method closes the form and we return to the previous form with the values in its controls still intact). Doing this interaction is asp.net is very clumsy. I hope SL will address this issue. Thanks

  • Anonymous
    June 05, 2008
    can your session be seen by video later? or in TechEd Yokohama, can the same session be seen?

  • Anonymous
    June 06, 2008
    Hi Masaki, Unfortunately my session will not be recorded. If you'd like to have my session be in TechEd Yokohama, please contact your local Microsoft representative and representative and make a request. :) I'd love to come if TechEd Yokohama invites me. Cheers, Kathy

  • Anonymous
    June 09, 2008
    Thank you for reply. Not being recorded is regrettable. I am looking forward to the release, although bewildered by the change to beta 2 from beta 1. (This is machine translation.)