Silverlight 3, though it is in beta stage, but it came up with lots of new features. Some of them are mentioned below:

  • Silverlight 3 now supports H.264 video formats & AAC audio formats. Now it also supports RAW audio/video pipeline
  • It now supports GPU Acceleration by adding a parameter (EnableGPUAcceleration = "true") in the Silverlight object
  • It now supports 3D functionalities. You can now add Perspective view to the element level
  • Various Effects has been introduced in Silverlight 3 using Pixel Shader API (e.g. Blur, DropShadow etc)
  • Various Animations (like: bouncing, transition) are now part of the Silverlight 3
  • A user can start a Silverlight out-of-browser "application" either by right-clicking on the Silverlight element or by clicking on a button within the application itself
  • Silverlight now supports custom dialogs. By using the SaveFileDialog you can now write contents outside the sandbox
  • It now supports local messaging across multiple silverlight plugins
  • XAP compression has been improved
  • Lots of new controls (like: DockPanel, WrapPanel, Label, ViewBox, TreeView, ExpanderControl, AutoCompleteBox) were added in this version. New controls in the Silverlight Toolkit are also available
  • DataPagination has been added in Silverlight 3
  • Using NavigationFramework you can now navigate to different view of the application. You can now integrate the browser back/forward functionalities with this framework
  • Binding of elements are now available by which you can update the UI without any code. Data validation in binding is also available in this release
  • AssemblyCaching is now available by which you can download the external assemblies only once & later you can use them from the cache. This will improve the application load time during next load
  • In Silverlight 3 Network monitoring API has been introduced, by which you can check whether the application is connected to the network or not
  • Now binary XML format is also supported in addition to the text XML which will improve the performance in the messaging area

Cheers :)

Published by on under Silverlight | Web

If you are migrating Silverlight applications that were created for the Silverlight 2 Beta 2 release or earlier to the final release of Silverlight 2, you are going to need to get the newest Silverlight 2 Tools for Visual Studio 2008 and recompile your project(s).

1. Get the newest version of Silverlight 2 Tools for Visual Studio 2008. You can get these tools from the SDK or online at Getting Started. You may have to uninstall any old tools before doing this install.

2. Open your old project (e.g. .csproj file). A dialog will come up notifying you that your project was created with an older version of Silverlight tools and asks you if you want to upgrade your project. Click the Yes button.

3. Open all of the HTML files and change:

· The Silverlight MIME type from application/x-silverlight-2-b1 or application/x-silverlight-2-b2 to application/x-silverlight-2.

· The Silverlight installation URL from http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=108182 or http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=115261 to http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=124807.

When the XAP is served from a different domain than the host HTML page, Silverlight will validate that the MIME type (Content-Type response header) returned on the HTTP response is application/x-silverlight-app. You are required to add an entry for the Silverlight XAP MIME type to your .htaccess file — e.g. AddType application/x-silverlight-app xap.

Note IIS7 shipped with the right MIME type configurations for Silverlight XAPs. No action is required if you are using IIS7.

Published by on under Silverlight |