New Features of Silverlight 2

In October 2008, Microsoft released version 2 of Silverlight. This new version is expected to revolutionize the world of rich Internet application development and has already started to make its presence felt. 

 

A few of the new features in the latest version of Silverlight are tabulated here:

 

New Feature	What this means for you as a developer
Support for the .NET Framework and its base class libraries	A powerful environment and runtime for rich Internet application development   Lesser coding efforts as you can take advantage of the built-in classes in the base class library   Improvement in productivity
Advanced Support for Networking	REST, WS*/SOAP, POX, RSS and standard HTTP services can now be called in applications with the help of new networking features in Silverlight 2.   This helps for advanced networking as well as richer Web services.
A number of built-in controls	Silverlight 1 had many controls but Silverlight 2 now adds even more to the existing set thus enabling you to create richer user interfaces.   Controls such as DataGrid, ListBox, Slider, CheckBox, RadioButton, and ScrollViewer can be used for this purpose.
Advanced Styles and Skinning Support	Rich Internet applications are characterized by powerful well-designed user interfaces and for this, ample style and skinning support are required.   Silverlight 2 meets these needs and enables you to work with advanced skinning techniques.
Support for more .NET Framework languages:	Silverlight 2 now supports more programming languages such as, managed JavaScript, IronPython and IronRuby.   This makes it easier for those developers who are already familiar with these languages to develop Silverlight applications.
Better Digital rights management	Web applications often involve content management and protecting the rights of content against digital media is nowadays a very important issue.   Silverlight digital rights management (DRM) powered by PlayReady offers strong content protection features.
Improved Server Scalability	Scalability is often a headache for developers and architects. Silverlight 2 in combination with Windows Server 2008 gives better scalability in the field of streaming video and also enables cutting-edge progressive download features.
Advanced Advertiser Support	Silverlight offers far improved search engine optimization capabilities and advanced in-stream advertising support.
Deep Zoom Technology	Silverlight includes support for a new technology, Deep Zoom, to allow users to see images on the Web like they had seen never before. Deep Zoom enables smooth, in-place zooming and panning, which is a true advancement and revolutionizes the world of image viewing. This feature also makes it possible to consume super-high-resolution images easily on the Web.   You can reduce Web hosting and bandwidth costs by using Deep Zoom. This is achieved by sending exactly the right size and resolution image for the current display area to the browser, thus avoiding unwanted hosting features and reducing bandwidth. Silverlight 2 delivers a wide range of new features that provide designers and developers the tools they need to build cutting-edge rich Internet applications (RIA) and advanced media experiences on the Web. Highlights include:

 

 

Conclusion: With a host of such new features, Silverlight is soon bound to become a hot favorite with developers, who can now look forward to developing and delivering better user experiences on the Web.