Microsoft provides a tool named “MakeCert.exe” which helps us to create a temporary SSL Certificate for development environment. This tool comes with Visual Studio & also with Windows SDK. If you installed Visual Studio, you can find it in this location: “C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio <VERSION>\SmartDevices\SDK\SDKTools”. If you installed Windows SDK, you will get it here: “C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\<VERSION>\Bin”.

Now open Command Console (“cmd.exe”) & change your current directory to one of the location specified above. Type the following in Command Prompt & hit enter:

makecert -b 01/01/2009 -e 01/01/2020 -n "CN=Developers" -pe -r -sk "Microsoft Cryptographic Provider" -ss "Microsoft Cryptographic Store" c:\developerCertificate.cer

This will create a test certificate (valid from 01/01/2009 to 01/01/2020) named “developerCertificate.cer” in your ‘C’ drive, which you can use for development environment. You can change the validity period by changing the begindate (-b) & expirydate (-e). You can also change all the parameters specified above.

Here is the list of the parameters mentioned above:

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 :)

Microsoft has released Silverlight 3 Beta 1, which is backward compatible with Silverlight 2. That means, you can run your existing Silverlight 2 applications in Silverlight 3 environment.

Here you will find some important links:

• Developer Runtime
• Silverlight SDK
• Tools for VS 2008 SP1
• Expression Blend 3 Preview
• Online Documentation
• Offline Documentation

Today Microsoft has released the Final Version of Microsoft Silverlight 2.

Here’s the expected final SDK, Expression, and Silverlight tools:

• Microsoft Silverlight 2 SDK
• Expression Blend 2 SP1
• Silverlight Tools for Visual Studio 2008 SP1
• Deep Zoom Composer

For more information's visit:

• Scottgu’s Blog
• Hanselman’s Blog
• Timheur’s Blog

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.