2 days ago in last PDC Microsoft released Silverlight 4 Beta 2. I sneaked through the feature list a while ago. It seems some interesting features are included along with performance tuning.
Before I discuss about the features I want to focus on the performance issue as it caught my eyes and I think others will also be interested on it. “Silverlight 4 applications start quicker and run 200% faster than the equivalent Silverlight 3 application.” This line was the source of my interest. If this is true than I think everyone will have to look at Silverlight 4 before eating up Silverlight 3 completely. Its not 10% or 20% its 200%, if this is true than it is a huge boost up. Though I hardly believe this will be true for all cases. My assumption is some specially slow feature like RIA service and networking features has been tuned up mostly. Still lets see how fast it is.
Now lets get a look at the new features,
There is some big list, but I will pick up those that caught my eyes.
- Webcam and microphone to allow sharing of video and audio for instance for chat or customer service applications.
- Audio and video local recording capabilities capture RAW video without requiring server interaction, enabling a wide range of end-user interaction and communication scenarios for example video conferencing.
Few days ago, I was looking for a video conferencing feature for website. As a .net developer my search went to Silverlight 3 and I was pretty sure that there is something for this, but unfortunately I ended in a dead end. My friend who was actually asking me to make a video conference tool for his website made me do this query on Silverlight, but I was surprised to see that though it is possible with Flash, it is still not possible with Silverlight 3 or at least no straight forward support for it in Silverlight 3 (I am not so sure whether it is possible somehow using the streaming feature, at least to me it was not so promising for this issue). But now with Silverlight 4 it will be possible. I am waiting for the full release of it.
some more……
- Read and write files to the user’s MyDocuments, MyMusic, MyPictures and MyVideos folder (or equivalent for non-windows platforms) for example storage of media files and taking local copies of reports.
- Run other desktop programs such as Office, for example requesting Outlook to send an email, send a report to Word or data to Excel.
- COM automation enables access to devices and other system capabilities by calling into application components; for instance to access a USB security card reader.
I was surprised to see that it is now so easy to access user’s machine form Silverlight 4 application. Well I am not saying that it will be always intended and I must say over using or misusing it may not be a good idea. But now there is a friendly and easy way to open up an Excel file from Silverlight application and even establish a communication between them so that if any change made to the Excel file, it show up in Silverlight 4 application and vise versa .
Also cross domain request can be easily made for requests that do not require authentication - even without a security policy file.
- Support for Google’s Chrome browser.
Yes this support is important, there is nothing more frustrating to deliver a product to a client and to find out that he is a Chrome fan and your application do not run on it.
- Content protection for H.264 media through Silverlight DRM powered by PlayReady.
- Output protection for audio/video streams allowing content owners or distributors to ensure protected content is only viewed through a secure video connection.
Well those who care about copyright and data security can use these features for sure.
So now you can just make an MP3 application with Silverlight 4 and drag an MP3 file on it and will start to play, yes it is now possible. Well done!
Well I am not a hard core user of report yet. It seems like Microsoft takes it as the top feature putting it on the top. I think they have done a good job with the reporting charts and printing. So I have to have a look at it yet.
There are other many features like new set of controls, drag drop, auto binding, full intellisense for XAML and C# and VB languages, and many more. just go to Silverlight website to find out more about it.