November 29th, 2007
Microsoft rechristens Silverlight 1.1 as 'Silverlight 2.0'
Microsoft has decided the next version of its Silverlight Flash-competitor is more worthy of a 2.0 moniker than a 1.1 one.
On November 29, Developer Division General Manager Scott Guthrie blogged that Microsoft has decided to rechristen its next Silverlight release as 2.0. Microsoft plans to make a beta build of the next version of Silverlight available under a “Go Live” license in the first quarter of 2008, Guthrie added. (A Go-Live license allows users/developers to begin deploying applications in production based on the beta.)
Microsoft made an alpha version of Silverlight 1.1 (now Silverlight 2.0) available to testers in April 2007. The final version of Silverlight 2.0 is due out in 2008.
Microsoft shipped Silverlight 1.0 for Windows and the Mac OS platforms earlier this fall. Silverlight 2.0 adds support for ASP.Net Ajax, Language-Integrated Query (LINQ) and JavaScript, as well as support for Visual Basic, C#, Python and Ruby, which it will make available via a new Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR) layer.
Novell is building a version of Silverlight 2.0 that will run on Linux, which is code-named Moonlight.
Microsoft is positioning Silverlight — formerly codenamed “Windows Presentation Foundation/Everywhere,” or WPF/E — not only as a multimedia player, but also as a development and delivery vehicle for Rich Internet Applications (RIAs).
I’ll be interested to see if Microsoft ends up using Silverlight as a way to deliver applications like Word in the not-too-distant future, a la Adobe’s Buzzword. I bet it’s not a matter of “if” the company will do so; it’s more a question of when. Do you agree?
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| 11/29/07
