Tim Acheson's Blog : Silverlight 3 is released

Silverlight 3 is released

The new release of Silverlight, version 3.0, was launched today!

I was hoping to be the first to write a blog post about some of the powerful new features now available in Silverlight. Unfortunately, Scott Guthrie beat me to it with what is probably still the most useful blog post about the announcement.

New toys to play with! Here's a summary of what's new in SL3, on top of the impressive set of features which have already been available since version 2.0.

Media
- Live and on-demand true HD and Smooth Streaming.
- Additional formats now supported out-of-the-box, including VC-1/WMA, Silverlight 3 now offers users native support for MPEG-4-based H.264/AAC Audio
- Extensible media format support, with the ability to use third-party codecs (or even write your own codec) for any format (in theory an infinite variety of media formats) by handling the raw bits through MediaStreamSource.
- Full HD (1080p) in and out of full-screen mode.
- Improved content protection through additional DRM features.
UI
- 3D graphics with perspective
- Pixel shader effects
- Bitmap caching
- Bitmap manipulation API
- Themes and styles
- Advanced animation and special-effects
- Enhancements to skinning of UI elements
- Improvements to the performance of text rendering and fonts
Productivity
- More than 60 built-in controls (with source code) that can add almost any imaginable functionality in a few easy mouse-clicks.
- Enhanced data support, including element-to-element binding, data forms, enhanced validation features, and easy management of business objects/entities. True n-Tier architecture support.
User experience, usability and SEO
- Deep linking and automatic support for browser bookmarking/favourites hooking into the app
- Complete support for SEO, making any content in the app indexable by search engines
- 100% accessibility, Silverlight 3 being the first browser plug-in capable of offering full accessibility, including the ability for the user to activate alternative/high-contrast colour schemes.
Desktop applications and out-of-browser support
- Seamless movement of applications between the desktop and the browser in pure Silverlight, with no additional software involved, it's just plain Silverlight, which also means no differences for the developer to worry about regardless of where the app is running.
Improved performance generally
- Library caching
- Binary XML, arguably the most efficient method currently available for data exchange between server and client, without the overhead of serialization/deserialization, making even JSON look like a dated, bloated format.
- Local connection allows communication between Silverlight client apps without having to involve a server
- Enhanced deep zoom can turn high-res images into almost infinitely content-rich, navigable user elements