14 DAY TRIAL // The next version of Silverlight has entered in the last stage of the development process ahead of release to web (RTW), a milestone which should come ahead of the end of 2011. Early adopters can already download Silverlight 5 Release Candidate (RC) Build 5.0.60818.0, which is a developer preview, as the software giant put it.
Being a dev release, the Redmond company didn’t bother to slap a go-live license on top of Silverlight 5 RC, so there’s no releasing code to the public, as developers are limited to running it in testing environments.
Along with Silverlight 5 RC Build 5.0.60818.0, Microsoft also made available a set of dev resources, including the Silverlight 5 RC SDK, Silverlight 5 RC Tools for Visual Studio 2010 SP1 and WCF RIA Services V1.0 SP2 RC. Check below for download links.
Of course, documentation is also available to help early adopters make the best of the testing releases of Silverlight 5.
Testers can head over to the Microsoft Download Center and grab the Silverlight 5 RC Offline Documentation for use in offline scenarios and not only.
While the downloadable package offers the MSDN developer documentation for Silverlight 5, the content is also available on MSDN.
“The documentation in this section applies to Silverlight 5 RC, Silverlight 4, Silverlight 3, and Silverlight for Windows Phone. For version differences check the Version Information section when using a class library topic, or look for version-specific notes in other topic types,” Microsoft notes.
“Silverlight 5 RC includes several new features that are based on customer suggestions. This topic introduces some of the new features and improvements in Silverlight 5 RC,” the company adds.
Silverlight.net also provides easy access to all Silverlight 5 RC releases, including a PDF document designed to describe all the features in the latest development milestone. The doc currently still references the Silverlight 5 Beta, but the software giant will undoubtedly remedy this issue.
Silverlight 5 Release Candidate (RC) Build 5.0.60818.0 is available for download here.
Silverlight 5 RC SDK is available for download here.
Silverlight 5 RC Tools for Visual Studio 2010 SP1 is available for download here.
WCF RIA Services V1.0 SP2 RC is available for download here.