Silverlight 4 Beta Documentation Already in the Works

Microsoft is moving onward with the development of Silverlight, the technology designed to rival Adobe Flash. Having offered version 3 of Silverlight earlier this year, the Redmond company is now focusing on the upcoming iteration, which will most probably be offered in 2010, taking into consideration the yearly delivery pace of previous releases. The successor of v3, Silverlight 4 is currently in development in Redmond, with the company working its way to produce the first Beta. And even if the Silverlight 4 Beta 1 is not available, the software giant’s technical writers are currently busy documenting all features that will be specific to the development milestone.

“Right now writers are mostly focused on documenting Silverlight 4 Beta features (of course SL4 Beta hasn't released yet),” revealed a member of the Silverlight SDK team. In the first half of September 2009, Microsoft delivered a taste of Silverlight 4 at the International Broadcasting Conference (IBC) in Amsterdam. At that time, the company presented the general development paths that it was considering for Silverlight 4.

Silverlight 4 will take support for native multicast one step further. In addition, Microsoft is looking to provide offline digital rights management (DRM) via PlayReady. The introduction of offline DRM into Silverlight 4 gives birth to a range of new scenarios in which sources of media content will be able to serve digital materials to customers.

Essentially, support for Higher Quality video and audio along with DRM indicates that Silverlight 4 is being tailored for content serving models in which media companies will sell video materials (movies included) to customers, allow them to download the materials and watch them even when offline. Of course, additional details will be offered as Silverlight 4’s development process will advance.

In the meantime, Microsoft’s technical writers also updated the documentation for Silverlight 3, in addition to working on that for Silverlight 4 Beta. “We just refreshed the online docs for Silverlight 3. In addition, the offline CHMhas been updated. Most of the updates were just doc bug fixes,” the Silverlight team member added. “BTW, would you prefer the CHM as a .rar file or as a self extracting executable rather than a .zip? New downloads of WinZip only have a trial period and I want to make sure everyone can get the CHM. IMPORTANT! If you open the CHM and cannot view content, do the following to resolve the issue: Right-click the CHM file, and then click "Properties". Click "Unblock". Double-click the .chm file to open the file.”

Silverlight 3 GDR 2 Build 3.0.40818 is available for download here.

Silverlight 3 SDK is available for download here.
Microsoft Silverlight 3 Tools for Visual Studio 2008 SP1 are available for download here.