Free Silverlight 4 Training Kit Available

On the first day of MIX10, Microsoft made available for download the first and, what appears to be also the only, Release Candidate of Silverlight 4. Concomitantly with the new development milestone, which continues to be focused exclusively on offering developers a chance at adapting content for the imminent RTW deadline, Microsoft has also released free training resources. The Silverlight 4 Training Kit can be grabbed free of charge from the Microsoft Download Center, and is, as you’d expect, focused on the RC milestone of the technology.

“Here’s an exciting announcement for all of you developers, developers, developers out there! Channel 9 is offering a free Silverlight 4 Training Kit. The training kit includes a whitepaper explaining all of the new Silverlight 4 features, several hands-on-labs that explain the features, and a 8 unit course for building business applications with Silverlight 4,” Eric Ligman, Global Partner Experience lead Microsoft Worldwide Partner Group, revealed.

Silverlight 4 Release Candidate (RC) Build 4.0.50303.0 is the last testing milestone before the technology will be released to web. The promise from Microsoft is that Silverlight 4 will hit RTW in April 2010, the next month. At this point in time, Silverlight 4 can only be used for testing, as Microsoft did not provide a go-live license to accompany the Release Candidate Build. Still, devs can set up the testing environment and get ready for the final version of Silverlight 4. The Training Kit is, in this regard, a great resource designed to help developers get started with Silverlight 4 projects.

“The business applications course includes 8 modules with extensive hands on labs as well as accompanying videos that walk you through key aspects of building a business application with Silverlight. Key aspects in this course are working with sandboxed out of browser features, elevated trust out of browser features, the new RichTextBox control, implicit styling, webcam, drag and drop, multi touch, validation, authentication, MEF, WCF RIA Services, right mouse click, and much more,” Ligman stated.

Silverlight 4 Release Candidate (RC) Build 4.0.50303.0 is available for download here.

The Silverlight 4 Training Kit is available for download here.