14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft released its most recent development milestone of Silverlight a little over a month ago, and early adopters now have an updated version of the Silverlight 5 Toolkit to play with as well. Silverlight 5 Release Candidate (RC) Build 5.0.60818.0 went live at the start of September, with the Redmond company not wanting to wait until BUILD to offer developers a near-final version of Silverlight 4’s successor.
This week, the company also launched the September 2011 update to the Silverlight 5 Toolkit, a refresh tailored to the Silverlight 5 RC.
According to the official description of the update, the Silverlight 5 Toolkit is now equipped with new controls designed to let developers target Silverlight 5's new 3D features.
David Catuhe, developer evangelist, Microsoft France, offered a range of details about Silverlight 5 Toolkit September 2011, including insight into how devs can make the best out of the new 3D features introduced into Silverlight 5.
“All these new additions to the Silverlight Toolkit are made to make it easy to get started with new Silverlight 3D features by providing developer tools to improve usability and productivity,” Catuhe said.
“You can now easily start a new project that leverages both concepts of XNA and Silverlight. It becomes easy to work with 3D concepts and resources like shaders, model, sprites, effects, etc... We also try to reduce the effort to port existing 3D applications to Silverlight. So now it’s up to you to discover the wonderful world of 3D using Silverlight 5!”
Microsoft is currently working to finalize Silverlight 5, with the released to web (RTW) development milestone expected by the end of 2011. However, at this point in time, the software giant has yet to reveal the actual launch deadline.
Developers can play with the RC for now, but they need to keep in mind that Microsoft did not offer a go-live license, and as such Silverlight 5 projects need to only run in test scenarios and not in production.
Silverlight 5 Toolkit September 2011 is available for download here.