Visual Studio 2010 and Silverlight 4
Wow, Microsoft has been very busy this month! Unless you've been on a serious sabbatical this past few weeks, I am sure you're aware that Microsoft officially launched and, more importantly, released Visual Studio 2010. I had the privileged to be a part of the Launch event in Las Vegas on April 12th and it was great to see so many developers turn out for it. The ballroom that it was held in was standing-room-only. Bob Muglia, President, Server and Tools Business, presented the Keynote and if you haven't seen it, I'd encourage you to watch (link below).
Watch the Visual Studio Keynote.
The launch event (sponsored by DevConnections) was very well attended, largest I've seen in the past two years, and a good indicator that companies are starting to embrace new technology and invest in the future--and Microsoft is not slowing down either. Shortly after the launch of Visual Studio 2010, Scott Guthrie's team released its new Silverlight 4 platform on April 15th. This new release gives Silverlight developers many new features including:
- 200 percent speed increase
- Extensive tooling support in Visual Studio 2010
- 60 customizable and skinnable controls
- Windows Phone 7 support
- Runs across all platforms and major browsers
- The CLR enables the same complied code to be run both on the server and the client
But wait, that's not all. Microsoft didn't stop but continued its fire hose launch schedule. Next was Microsoft Office 2010--it was released April 22nd. Officially, Microsoft is scheduled to launch Office 2010 on May 12th in New York but MSDN subscribers and companies with volume license agreements can get a copy today. Equally as exciting, Microsoft is also launching Microsoft SharePoint 2010 at the same time. This new release of SharePoint has some major improvements and I strongly encourage you to take a look at it. A great way to get up to speed is through AppDev's new learning course, "Exploring SharePoint 2010".
Well, as you can imagine, things here at AppDev are extremely busy. When Microsoft releases a new technology, let alone four technologies, we become very busy updating all of our learning courses with the latest information developers need.
Enjoy!