Silverlight 5 Plans

Hello All,

I got this news from one of my fellow Silverlight MVP, that the Microsoft is planning for the new version of silver light that is Version 5, with some new features and capability for helping the developer to create some good application.. I have seen the Blog of Timheuer here is the Blog link from where I have got these information. http://tinyurl.com/2wdx6ge

Here are some of the features For the Media side

• Hardware Decode and presentation of H.264 media
• “TrickPlay” allows video to be played at different speeds and supports fast-forward and rewind. At up to twice the speed, audio pitch correction allows users to watch videos while preserving a normal audio pitch.
• Improved power awareness prevents the screen saver from being shown while watching video and allows the computer to sleep when video is not active.
• Remote-control support allowing users to control media playback.
• Digital rights management advancements allow seamless switching between DRM media sources.

And In the Application Development side.

• Fluid user interface enables smoother animation within the UI. Layout transitions allow developers to specify animations to apply when elements are added, removed or re-ordered within a layout. This provides smoother user experiences when, for example, items are inserted into a list.
• Text improvements make it possible to build rich magazine-style text layouts:
• Multicolumn text and linked text container allow text to flow around other elements.
• Tracking/leading set precisely how far apart each character is for full creative control.
• Text clarity is improved with Pixel Snapping.
• Text layout performance is significantly improved.
• OpenType support has been enhanced.
• Support for Postscript vector printing enables users to create reports and documents, including the ability to create a virtual print view different from what is shown on the screen.
• Applications can now work the way users expect with added support for double-click and ComboBox type ahead.
• Databinding enhancements allow more work to be done more easily via XAML:
• Debugging support now allows breakpoints to be set on a binding, so you can step through binding failures.
• Implicit DataTemplates allow templates to be created across an application to support a particular type by default.
• Ancestor RelativeSource allows, for example, a DataTemplate to bind to a property on the control that contains it.
• Binding in style setters allows bindings to be used within styles to reference other properties.
• The DataContextChanged event is being introduced. Markup extensions allow code to be run at XAML parse time for both properties and event handlers, enabling cutting-edge MVVM support.
• Networking and Windows Communication Foundation enhancements:
• Reduced network latency by using a background thread for networking.
• WS-Trust support: Security Assertion Markup Language authentication token.
• Silverlight 5 performance improvements include these:
• Reduced network latency by using a background thread for networking.
• XAML parser improvements that speed up startup and runtime performance.
• Support for 64-bit operating systems.
• Graphics improvements
• Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) accelerated 3-D application programming interface (API) provides rich graphics on the Web for building advanced data visualizations and rich user experience (UI).
• Immediate mode graphics API allows direct rendering to the GPU.
• Hardware acceleration is enabled in windowless mode with Internet Explorer 9.
• Silverlight offers a new class of trusted applications that brings desktop capabilities to the browser for the first time. These features, when enabled via a group policy registry key and an application certificate, mean users won’t need to leave the browser to perform complex tasks:
• Host HTML content as a Web browser control within the Silverlight application. HTML pages, such as help content or e-mail, can be integrated within the application.
• Read and write files to the user’s My Documents folder, making it easier to find media files or create local copies of reports.
• Launch Microsoft Office and other desktop programs. Users can open Microsoft Outlook and create an e-mail message, or send a report to Word utilizing the power of Office.
• Access devices and other system capabilities by calling into application COM components. Users can access a USB security card reader or a bar-code scanner.
• Enjoy full keyboard support in full screen, which enables richer kiosk and media viewing applications.
• Call existing unmanaged code directly from within Silverlight with P/Invoke.
• Out-of-browser trusted applications are further enhanced:
• Existing unmanaged code can be called directly from within Silverlight with P/Invoke.
• Child Window support allows multiple windows to be launched from the application.

You can read the detail article on this blog Here. And please post your comment and suggestion so that we can forward it to the silver light team.

Thanks,

Anil Kumar Pandey

MVP (Visual C#)