14 DAY TRIAL // While the next iteration of Silverlight is not planned for availability until 2010, there is absolutely nothing stopping customers from getting in the technology early, at this point in time. At the Professional Developer Conference 2009 in Los Angeles last week, Microsoft released the first beta development milestone of Silverlight 4 and accompanied the release with additional resources designed to get developers started building content. The software development kit for Silverlight 4 Beta is also available for download from Microsoft, along with the runtime for the company’s alternative to Adobe Flash.
“The Microsoft Silverlight 4 SDK Beta contains online documentation, online samples, libraries and tools for developing Silverlight 4 applications. Usage of the SDK is subject to the SDK License (included in the package),” Microsoft revealed.
At this point in time, there’s not much that can be done with Silverlight 4. Microsoft emphasized the fact that the first Beta is exclusively a developer release. Devs can, in this regard, download Silverlight 4, along with all additional development resources, and start building content for the successor of Silverlight 3. However, in the context in which Microsoft does not provide a go-live license, all Silverlight 4 content can be used for testing purposes only.
Obviously, as was the case with previous release, Silverlight 4 Beta will be opened to the general public. Microsoft has so far not made public a deadline at which it intends to offer the first public milestone of Silverlight 4 to the masses, still, such a move is bound to be reserved for the coming year.
“The toolkit has been updated to provide support for Visual Studio 2010 and Silverlight 4 beta development. The Toolkit provides numerous controls for your application and source code is also included for these controls using an Open Source license,” the Redmond company added.
Silverlight 4 SDK Beta is available for download here.
Silverlight 4 Beta is available for download here.
Microsoft Expression Blend Preview for .NET 4 is available for download here.
Silverlight 4 Beta is available for download here.
Microsoft Expression Studio 3 Trial is available for download here.
Microsoft Expression Web 3 Trial is available for download here.
Microsoft Expression Blend 3 + SketchFlow Trial is available for download here.
Microsoft Expression Design 3 Trial is available for download here.
Microsoft Expression Encoder 3 is available for download here.