Silverlight 5 RC now Available

Silverlight 5 RC now Available

.NET   Silverlight  

I'm please to announce the general availability of the Silverlight 5 release candidate (RC) as of approximately 10am Pacific this morning (give the servers a few minutes to replicate the links and content). Hop on over to the downloads page on Silverlight.net and grab the bits and start using them.

This RC is a developer-only release (there is no go-live license), designed to get you read for the final release later this year. Use this release to update your SL5 beta code to work with the namespace and reference changes, and to use the new features.

This isn't the final release, so please go out and test it, and report any bugs you find.

In addition to what we had in the beta, some of the more exciting features included in this release are:

• P/Invoke support for calling native functions
• 64 bit support (yay!)
• Vector (Postscript) Printing
• Remote Control and Media Command Support
• DataContextChanged event
• In-Browser Trusted Applications
• PivotViewer Control
• Power awareness for media apps (keep the PC alive while a movie is playing, for example)

Update 9/4/2011: A more complete list of features in Silverlight 5 is now available in my Big List of What's New or Improved in Silverlight 5.

In addition, we made several changes to the locations of some of the XNA namespaces and files. For example, you'll find that much of the 3d stuff has moved to a different DLL. We've also changed the Linked Text feature to use the read-only RichTextBlock rather than the editable RichTextBox. I've updated both posts and their downloadable source code to reflect the changes.

Please go ahead and refer back to the Silverlight 5 beta information for other features. Here are some of my beta posts, updated for the RC:

• What's New in Silverlight 5 Beta
• Silverlight 5: Working with Implicit Templates and video
• Silverlight 5: Supporting Double and Even Triple Click for the Mouse and video
• Silverlight 5: Using the SoundEffect Class for Low-Latency Sound (and play WAV files in Silverlight) and video
• Silverlight 5: Advancements in Text and video
• Silverlight 5: Working with Operating System Windows and video
• Silverlight 5: Debugging Bindings with Xaml Breakpoints and video

Other interesting references from the beta timeframe

• Silverlight 5 Beta-A guide to the new features (Tim Heuer)
• Announcing the Silverlight 5 Beta Release and the Silverlight.net Redesign (me)
• What's new in Silverlight 5: Silverlight.NET (Silverlight.net)
• Binding to Dynamic Properties with ICustomTypeProvider (Silverlight 5 Beta) (Alexandra Rusina)
• Using ICustomTypeProvider in Silverlight 5 beta with JSON and ASP.NET MVC 3 (Matt Duffield)

If you're looking for a one-stop shop for learning Silverlight 5, consider my book Silverlight 5 in Action, to be released near the end of this year. It's currently in MEAP, with purchasers able to download chapters as I make them available.