Mustard Design Weblog

Flash web designers looking to try an alternative product will be able to test the newest version of Microsoft’s Silverlight software in early 2011, according to a blog post by the corporate vice president of Microsoft’s developer division.

Scott Guthrie has revealed that version 5 of Silverlight will begin open beta testing in the first quarter of 2011. In his blog post, Guthrie says that the newest version of the application framework will offer a range of features for web developers to create an interactive website design, stream 3D animation video or other types of rich internet applications such as architectural visualisation tools.

“Silverlight 5 adds significant new features and capabilities and enables developers to create premium media experiences and deliver rich applications across browsers, desktops and devices,” says Guthrie.

These features include support for GPU accelerated video decode, which Guthrie claims will allow “even low powered netbooks…to play back 1080p HD content,” support for remote control devices, “improved power awareness” to prevent screensavers from interrupting movies/videos during playback and the introduction of ‘Trickplay’. This is a feature for Silverlight 5 which enables clientside variable speed playback of media with automatic pitch correction.

Other improvements will be less visible to end users, but will be significant to web designers and developers. This includes better out-of-browser capabilities, improved application start up and support for 64-bit web browsers, as well enhanced data binding, MVVM, WCF and RIA services. Silverlight 5 will also be bolstered by the addition of automated UI testing support for Silverlight applications with Visual Studio 2010.

“We are really excited about the great new capabilities that Silverlight 5 will deliver,” says Guthrie in his post.

by: William Hobson