At MIX08 in Las Vegas, Microsoft announced and released a couple of new products, including Beta 1 of Silverlight (and O'Reilly announced and released Essential Silverlight 2 Up-to-Date). Silverlight, however, comes in several downloads, and it is a bit difficult to keep track of all of them, so we'll have a look at what you can and what you should download.

From a developer's point of view, you will want to use Visual Studio 2008 to create Silverlight content. Visual Studio 2008 is not free (the free Express Editions do not suffice here), so there is no download link, however if you have an MSDN subscription you have access to the IDE at http://msdn.microsoft.com/subscriptions/. Then, the best option is to install the Microsoft Silverlight Tools Beta 1 for Visual Studio 2008 package. It integrates into Visual Studio 2008 and installes the following software, most of which would also be available in a separate package:

• Silverlight 2 Beta 1 (the browser plugin)


• Silverlight 2 SDK Beta 1 (documentation, tools)


• KB949325 for Visual Studio 2008 (an update/hotfix for Visual Studio 2008)


• Silverlight Tools Beta 1 for Visual Studio 2008 (project templates and add-ins for Visual Studio 2008)

After installation, you will have a new Start menu entry for the SDK, Visual Studio 2008 will provide project and web site templates for Silverlights, and your installed web browsers (currently Internet Explorer and Firefox are supported) will be able to display Silverlight content.

A bit hidden, but nevertheless very useful, is a CHM (Compiled HTML Help) file with loads of documentation. It is about 40MB in size, so you will find a wealth of information there. So download the Microsoft Silverlight 2 Software Development Kit Beta 1 Documentation and place the CHM file inside the ZIP archive to a place where it is easily accessibly for you. Finally, if you are curious how Microsoft implemented the various controls that come with Silverlight, have a look at the source code and unit tests available for them.

If you are designer, you might be interested in the visual tools provided for Silverlight. You may already know Microsoft Expression Blend, the tool to create WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) applications. A beta version of Expression Blend 2 allows to create Silverlight 1 content. An upcoming version of Blend will also support Silverlight 2. If you want to have a sneak peak of that, have a look at the Microsoft Expression Blend 2.5 March 2008 Preview. There, you will find two project templates related to Silverlight: one for version 1, and one for version 2.