This week we look at the Silverlight 3 announcement from Microsoft Mix'09 in Las Vegas, 3D support in JavaFX, some information on Flash SEO, March Madness in the browser, using Titanium with Flex applications, and much more. All this and more on the Weekly RIA RoundUp from InsideRIA.

FEATURED: Silverlight 3 Announced at Mix'09

This week Silverlight 3 was announced at the Microsoft Mix conference in Las Vegas. A beta version of the runtime and SDK were made available to developers after the keynote. While some features were already known (like h.264 support), this was the first time for developers to learn what will make up the third iteration of Microsoft's Flash Player competitor. This version brings many of Silverlight's features up to par with current Flash Player features including: perspective 3D, pixel shaders, GPU support, bitmap API, improved data binding, LocalConnection API, and network monitoring. In addition, some features are unique to this version of Silverlight including Microsoft's binary data transfer protocol, Binary XML, as well as access to the raw data for audio and video. This means that custom video/audio codecs could be possible.

There were several specific pieces to this announcement at Mix. I will take a look at a few of them:

Tim Heuer (Microsoft): A guide to Silverlight 3 new features

Official Silverlight Team Blog

As a part of the launch, the Silverlight team launched an official blog to help get news out to the development community:

The Silverlight Blog

Out of Browser Support

One of the bigger announcements in relation to Silverlight 3 was the addition of 'out of browser support'. This enables a user to take an existing browser-based Silverlight application and run it on the desktop (if the application has been setup with that functionality). This is a similar model to what JavaFX has done (but is a bit different from Adobe AIR). Once on the desktop, this application will have sandboxed access to the filesystem. There is also an update mechanism put in place that allows the user's desktop version of the application to be updated when the developer updates the web application (for more information see Tim Heuer's post below).

Shawn Wildermuth: Enabling Out-of-Browser Support in Silverlight 3

Ryan Stewart (Adobe): Differences Between Silverlight Out of Browser Experience and AIR

Tim Heuer (Microsoft): Silverlight 3 Out-of-browser Update Model

Silverlight Development on the Mac

A third party vendor, Soyatec, developed an open-source Eclipse plugin to allow for Silverlight development with the Eclipse IDE. The initial version was limited to PC developers. The latest version which was announced at Mix - now includes support for Mac.

Eclipse4SL.org: Eclipse Tools for Microsoft Silverlight

Blend 3 and The Updated Silverlight Toolkit

In addition to the runtime announcements, there was several tools that were updated as well. First, the Silverlight Toolkit was updated to include many new controls, charting updates, as well as several new themes. The new version of the toolkit can be downloaded from Codeplex.

In addition, Blend was updated as well. Blend 3 is designed to enable more collaboration between designers and developers. Part of this is included in SketchFlow which enables designers to send clients wireframes and get comments on the designs. In addition, Photoshop and Illustrator files can be imported directly (with full layer support). This version of Blend will also include support for sample data so that designers can test designs with data that is similar to production data. Lastly, Blend 3 will also fully support all of the API enhancements included in Silverlight 3.

Shawn Wildermuth: Blend 3 Improvements

Codeplex: Silverlight Toolkit March 2009 changes

Codeplex: Silverlight Toolkit - March 2009

JavaFX and 3D

Jim Weaver highlighted some work done by InteractiveMesh that adds 3D support within JavaFX. This provides a much lighter way to implement 3D than using the regular Java 3D canvas (which is not optimized for JavaFX).

Java 3D meets JavaFX - Thanks to InteractiveMesh.org

Adobe Updates Buzzword

Buzzword was updated this week. One of the more interesting features added to this release was the ability to see the difference between multiple versions of the same document. In addition, support was also added for exporting documents in EPUB format, which is the format used by many eBook readers. You can test out these changes yourself at Acrobat.com.

Acrobat.com Blog (Adobe): What's the Diff?

Flash SEO Advances

Serge Jespers, evangelist at Adobe, highlighted the advances made in Flash SEO over the past few months. He references a study done by Belgian based agency Nascom that demonstrates that Google can properly index Flash content. Serge also mentioned the new Adobe SEO Technology Center which should help anyone interested in learning more about SEO and Flash.

Serge Jespers (Adobe): SEO for Flash works

Adobe Developer Connection: SEO, Flash Platform | Adobe Developer Connection Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Technology Center

Using Titanium to Do Things AIR Can't Do

Mrinal Wadhwa gave an excellent example of how to integrate an existing Flex application with the open source Titanium runtime. This options allows developers to do things (like execute commands on the system) that currently aren't possible with Adobe AIR. Mrinal also includes the source code for his sample application.

Mrinal Wadhwa: Using Titanium to do things AIR can’t do

Silverlight Delivering March Madness

In the latest web-media event, Silverlight is powering CBS's YouTube live coverage of March Madness. The player sports some cool features including the ability for the user to switch between four different quality settings for the video. Also included is a 'Boss Button' that allows you to switch to a fake Microsoft Excel spreadsheet.

ReadWriteWeb: CBS Leverages Silverlight for YouTube NCAA March Madness Site

YouTube: YouTube - CBS NCAA Tourney's Channel

Read more from David Tucker.