Silverlight 5 Released - Download Silverlight 5 Tools

Scott Guthrie announced availability of Silverlight 5 Beta at MIX11 conference. We already know what is coming on Silverlight 5 beta during Silverlight Firestarter. It's time for us to download the first Beta of Silverlight 5 and make our hands dirty with those bits.

Read the post to get the downloadable links of Silverlight 5 Beta Tools for Visual Studio 2010 and Expression Blend Preview for Silverlight 5. Install them and start doing your hands dirty with the bits.


At MIX 2011 conference, Scott announced the availability of the first Beta version of Silverlight 5. The probable features list was already announced on December 2010 during Silverlight Firestarter by Scott and this is the time when we received the first version of Silverlight 5.

Make sure that, Silverlight 5 is currently in Beta release. Hence, it doesn't provide "Go-Live" license. You can install the developer run time as the production ready "end user" runtime is not available.

Downloads

You can download the Silverlight 5 from the below link. It requires you to install Visual Studio 2010 SP1 first. Find below the installation steps with the links:

• You can install Silverlight 5 beta along with Silverlight 4. So no need to uninstall any previous build of Silverlight
• If you don't have Visual Studio 2010 SP1 or Visual Web Developer Express 2010 SP1, get it from here: Download Visual Studio 2010 SP1 or Visual Web Developer Express 2010 SP1.
• Once you have the SP1 ready with you, download and install the Silverlight 5 Tools for Visual Studio 2010 SP1. This download will install all components necessary for Silverlight 5 Beta and Microsoft WCF RIA Services V1 SP2 Preview (April 2011) development:
  • Silverlight 5 Beta Developer Runtime
  • Silverlight 5 Beta SDK (software development kit)
  • Update for Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1 and Visual Web Developer Express 2010 Service Pack 1 (KB2502836)
  • Microsoft WCF RIA Services V1.0 SP2 Preview (April 2011)
• Install Expression Blend Preview for Silverlight 5 (optional).
• Download the Silverlight 5 SDK (optional, included in Silverlight 5 Tools)
• Download Silverlight 5 SDK Help (optional)
• Developer runtimes are available here for Windows and Mac OS (optional, automatically installs with Silverlight 5 Tools).
• Install WCF RIA Services v1 SP2 Preview (optional, installs with Silverlight 5 Tools).
• Silverlight 5 Features list can be found here (optional).

 

 

Top Features included in Silverlight 5 Beta

Here are some Top Features those had been included in this version of Silverlight 5 Beta:

• XAML Debugging with breakpoints for binding debugging
• Implicit data templates for easy UI reuse
• Double (and multi) click support
• GPU-accelerated XNA-compatible 3D and immediate-mode 2D API
• Low-latency sound effects and WAV support
• Real operating system windows and multi-display support
• Significant performance improvements, fixes and much more

Read More

More news and features lists are available in the following blog posts. Have a read.

• Silverlight 5 Beta–A guide to the new features - by Tim Heuer
• Announcing the Silverlight 5 Beta Release and the Silverlight.net Redesign - by Pete Brown

---

If you have come this far, it means that you liked what you are reading. Why not reach little more and connect with me directly on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn. I would love to hear your thoughts and opinions on my articles directly.

Also, don't forget to share your views and/or feedback in the comment section below.

---