Silverlight 2 in Beta

A .NET-enabled version of Silverlight is now available in beta form, and Microsoft has announced preview tools and partnerships to bring Silverlight to market. Silverlight is a platform for Rich Internet Applications (RIAs), which have interactivity on par with desktop applications but run locally in a Web browser using a plug-in. RIAs are potentially an attractive technology for corporate Web applications, and Microsoft intends to leverage its popular .NET development tools and languages to help Silverlight beat Adobe Flash as a RIA platform.

Leveraging Windows Tools Against Flash

Microsoft released the beta of Silverlight 2 at MIX ’08, its annual conference for Web developers, in Mar. 2008.

Silverlight 1, which was announced in Apr. 2007 and shipped in Sept. 2007, is focused on the most widespread use of Adobe’s Flash: Web video. Silverlight 2, which was announced at the same time as version 1, adds a cross-platform version of the .NET Framework and makes Silverlight a general-purpose platform for RIAs. In particular, it enables developers to use Visual Studio and Microsoft languages, such as C# and Visual Basic (VB), to program RIAs.