The first public Release Candidate of Silverlight 2.0 is now available for download. Microsoft has in this manner evolved past the Beta 2 build of its Adobe Flash killer, and is making headway toward the gold release of Silverlight version 2.0. Scott Guthrie, corporate vice president of Microsoft’s Developer Division and the head of the Silverlight design team, informed that only a handful of bug fixes separate Silverlight 2.0 from its RTW (release to web) milestone.

“The final release of Silverlight is not that far off now,” Guthrie promised. “It has been a pretty amazing project that has come a long way in a pretty short amount of time. If you have existing Beta2 applications, please start getting them ready for the final release - as once we release Silverlight 2, users that have existing beta releases installed will automatically be upgraded to use the final version. Testing your application out with the release candidate will ensure that you can easily update your applications and have them ready within hours of the final release.”

Guthrie indicated that the RC build of Silverlight 2.0 is set up to permit developers to adapt their content to the RTW variant of Silverlight 2.0. In this context, Microsoft is trying to ensure that existing Silverlight 2.0 Beta 2 applications will continue to work with the gold build of its cross-browser, cross-platform, and cross-device plug-in.

On September 25, Microsoft delivered only the tools necessary for the development of Silverlight 2.0 RC content. The Silverlight Developer Runtime edition, but also the Visual Studio and Expression Blend tools are available for download immediately. However, the same is not valid for the end-user edition of Silverlight 2.0.

“This is because we want to give existing developers a short amount of time to update their applications to work with the final Silverlight 2 APIs before sites are allowed to go live with it. There are some breaking changes between Beta 2 and this RC, and we want to make sure that existing sites can update to the final release quickly once the final release is out. As such, you can only use the RC for development right now - you can't go live with the new APIs until the final release is shipped (which will be soon though),” Guthrie added.

Silverlight 2 RC0 Developer Runtime is available for download via this link.

Microsoft Silverlight Tools for Visual Studio 2008 SP1 is available for download here.

Microsoft Expression Blend 2 Service Pack 1 Preview can be downloaded here.