14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft has made available for download an update version of Silverlight 4, taking the version number for the latest iteration of its alternative to Adobe Flash up to 4.0.51204. Silverlight 4.0.51204 is designed to resolve a couple of issues for which the Redmond company found it impossible to offer viable workarounds to customers.
According to Microsoft’s Tim Heuer, one of the issues was related to diacritics.
“Foreign diacritical marks (usually accent marks on non-US languages) do not display in a TextBox control or a RichTextBox control in an out-of-browser (OOB) application on the Mac platform. This update simply fixes what was a broken piece of functionality,” he stated.
The remaining problem that Silverlight 4.0.51204 resolves is related to Trusted and Signed Applications.
This aspect of the refresh changes the way in which Silverlight 4 out of browser (OOB) applications can turn on updates.
Prior to version 4.0.51204, only signed applications featuring matching non-expired certificates could enable an update. This is no longer the case.
“This update relaxes this restriction. After you apply the update, an OOB application can enable an update if the following conditions are true:
•Both the new application and the old application have valid signatures.
•The new application is signed with a trusted certificate.
•The Subject and the Issuer of the certificate that is used to sign the new application match those of the certificate that is used to sign the old application,” Heuer explained.
Microsoft recently introduced Silverlight 5 to the world, promising developers that it is committed to the technology even though it’s also pushing extremely hard to catalyze the finalization and adoption of HTML5.
A Beta of Silverlight 5 is expected in the first half of 2011, with the RTM version planned for launch by the end of next year.
Meanwhile, Silverlight 4.0.51204 “will be provided via Microsoft Update and other auto-update mechanisms for users. We felt the need to service these issues because of the lack of a usable workaround for customers. In the end this will benefit all Silverlight out-of-browser applications,” Heuer added.
Silverlight 4 Build 4.0.51204 is available for download here.