Microsoft To Launch Silverlight 4 Next Week

will officially launch Silverlight 4

Microsoft, which launched the Silverlight 4 Release Candidate at its MIX10 event last month, is positioning Silverlight 4 as a tool for developing line of business applications as well as a way to move the classic Windows Forms and ASP.Net/Ajax into a more modern user experience. Silverlight 4's hooks to SharePoint 2010, Office, and Internet Information Services (IIS) also reflect this business focus.

Scott Guthrie, corporate vice president of Microsoft's .Net Developer Platform, will deliver the news in a keynote at the DevConnections conference in Las Vegas. It's been a busy couple of months for Guthrie, who presided over last month's launch of the Windows Phone 7 development platform, which is powered by Silverlight.

Microsoft's choice of Silverlight -- the full Silverlight programming model, not a mobile version -- as the platform for native Windows Phone 7 application development has sent a charge through the software giant's army of developers. Windows Mobile didn't provide much incentive to this group, but Silverlight -- which is based on .NET -- is right up their alley.

Microsoft is now offering the Windows Phone 7 development toolkit as a free download, a package that includes Silverlight, Expression Blend for Windows Phone and a preview of Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Express.

Microsoft is also planning to launch Visual Studio 2010 on April 12, a release that includes technology that helps programmers bridge the .Net and Java worlds, as well as Windows Azure templates for moving code between cloud and on-premise applications.