14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft has entered the final stage of the development process for Silverlight 5, with the RTW expected later this year, although the company has yet to say exactly when.
But for the time being, early adopters can upgrade from the Beta released in mid-April 2011 at MIX11, to Silverlight 5 Release Candidate (RC) Build 5.0.60818.0.
The download links for Silverlight 5 RC went live on September 1st, 2011, and the software giant is urging testers to take it out for a spin.
“This RC is a developer-only release (there is no go-live license), designed to get you read for the final release later this year,” revealed Pete Brown, the lead of the Developer Guidance Community Team at Microsoft.
“Use this release to update your SL5 beta code to work with the namespace and reference changes, and to use the new features. This isn't the final release, so please go out and test it, and report any bugs you find.”
Testing is about the only thing that can be done with Silverlight 5, considering that the current license associated with Build 5.0.60818.0 doesn’t allow the code to be published on the web.
Still, it’s important for developers to see just what exactly is coming in Silverlight 5, and what’s changed since the Beta development milestone.
The locations of some of the XNA namespaces and files have been modified, Brown explained, but there are additional improvements in Silverlight 5 RC compared to Silverlight 5 Beta:
“◦ P/Invoke support for calling native functions
◦ 64 bit support
◦ Vector (Postscript) Printing
◦ Remote Control and Media Command Support
◦ DataContextChanged event
◦ In-Browser Trusted Applications
◦ PivotViewer Control
◦ Power awareness for media apps (keep the PC alive while a movie is playing, for example).”
Silverlight 5 RC is the last development milestone before the release to web (RTW) Build, which will be provided to both developers and the public by the end of 2011.
Silverlight 5 Release Candidate (RC) Build 5.0.60818.0 is available for download here.