Sep 3, 2010 09:46 GMT  ·  By

New resources are available for developers relying on Silverlight 4 for their projects. Both Silverlight 4 Tools for Visual Studio 2010 and the Silverlight 4 software development kit (SDK) are now live on the Microsoft Download center.

Of course, devs already running the latest iteration of Visual Studio should opt to download and ploy Silverlight 4 Tools for Visual Studio 2010.

The tools bring to the table add-on and pre-requisite files tailored to VS2010, streamlining the creation of Silverlight 4 and RIA Services applications.

Fact is that those integrating the Silverlight 4 Tools and Visual Studio 2010, no longer need the standalone SDK.

This because the Silverlight 4 Tools for Visual Studio 2010 contain the Silverlight 4 SDK along with the Silverlight 4 developer runtime; an update for Visual Studio 2010 and Visual Web Developer Express 2010 (KB982218); Silverlight 4 Tools for Visual Studio 2010; WCF RIA Services V1.0 for Silverlight 4 and the F# Runtime for Silverlight 4.

At the same time, the standalone Silverlight 4 SDK is also available for download. The SDK packages a number of resources, including libraries and tools, simplifying the process of building Silverlight apps.

Of course, Silverlight 4 Tools for Visual Studio 2010 is a much more complete offering for developers, since it acts as an extension to the Silverlight 3 capabilities, enabling devs to leverage C# or Visual Basic to build Silverlight applications.

Microsoft enumerated the “Silverlight 4 Tools for Visual Studio 2010 includes several features:

- Support for targeting Silverlight 4 in the Silverlight designer and project system

- RIA Services application templates and libraries

- Support for Silverlight 4 elevated trust and out-of-browser applications and other new Silverlight 4 features, including

 Working with Implicit Styles

- Go To Value Definition lets you directly get to styles from your page - Style Intellisense lets you easily modify styles

 Working with Data Source Window outputs

- Drag and drop from the data source window and see the data can, from which you can easily select and modify your data source information - Add, remove, and re-sort DSW outputs using the Grid Row and Column context menu - Move your controls around the form and change alignments in bulk using the margin editor - Add sample data to see item templates and bindings at design time

 Working with Silverlight 4 Out-of-browser applications

- Automatically launch and debug your OOB app from inside the IDE - Specify XAP signing for trusted OOB apps - Set the OOB window characteristics.”

Microsoft Silverlight 4 SDK is available for download here.

Microsoft Silverlight 4 Tools for Visual Studio 2010 is available for download here.

Silverlight 4 Build 4.0.50524.0 RTW is available for download here.

Visual Studio 2010 Premium is available for download
here.
Visual Studio 2010 Professional is available for download
here.
Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate is available for download
here.
Visual Studio Test Professional 2010 is available for download
here.

.NET Framework 4 RTM is available for download here.