Silverlight Toolkit Enhancing Silverlight 2

Silverlight 2 not enough? Well, there is a way to enhance Microsoft's Adobe Flash killer when it comes down to the developing end. The Silverlight Toolkit went live on CodePlex at the end of October 2008, and was updated the past week, with the latest bits up for grabs via the Redmond company's open source repository. Designed to lend a helping hand to Silverlight developers by offering a comprehensive set of components, the Silverlight Toolkit is essentially a complementary offering that is developed in parallel with the Silverlight release cycle.

“The Silverlight Toolkit is a project built by the Silverlight product team, which contains a lot of 'out-of-release cycle' controls. These are grouped into three parts: Controls, Charts, and Themes,” Max Knor, developer evangelist in the Developer and Platform Group Microsoft, revealed.

“These controls are especially useful if you plan to write business applications. Also, they have similar controls in WPF, so, if you plan to port your apps from Silverlight to WPF, they come in handy as well.”

In mid-October 2008 Microsoft made available for download Silverlight 2. The second iteration of Silverlight found the technology installed on over one in four computers worldwide, according to Microsoft, with its popularity increasing not only with end-users, but also with developers. Moreover, the developers are Microsoft's focus with the Silverlight Toolkit, which is capable of delivering new controls and updates at a faster pace compared to Silverlight itself.

“The Silverlight Toolkit is a collection of Silverlight controls, components, and utilities made available outside the normal Silverlight release cycle. It adds new functionality quickly for designers and developers, and provides the community an efficient way to help shape product development, by contributing ideas and bug reports. It includes full source code, unit tests, samples and documentation for 12 new controls covering charting, styling, layout, and user input,” an excerpt of the project's official description reads.

The Silverlight Toolkit is available for download here.

Silverlight 2 RTW (2.0.31005.0) is available for download here.