Mix 09: Microsoft Tweaks Silverlight To Deflect AdobeMix 09: Microsoft Tweaks Silverlight To Deflect Adobe

Adobe Flash and AIR, watch out. Microsoft Silverlight will soon work outside the browser as part of the next version of the multimedia browser plug-in.

Microsoft on Wednesday released the beta version of Silverlight 3.0 and announced a slew of other technologies at its Mix Web developer conference, all aimed at attracting Web developers to the Microsoft platform.

Silverlight 3, a final version of which will ship later this year, includes -- in addition to the ability to run Silverlight applications offline and outside of the browser -- a number of new video, graphics, and data-related features. Despite the added features, Silverlight 3 will actually come in a smaller download package than its predecessor.

With the out-of-browser support, developers can create Silverlight applications designed to run on the desktop, much like eBay Desktop, which was designed in Adobe AIR. Seattle radio station KEXP demonstrated a desktop Silverlight application that lets listeners play music, see additional details about songs being played, interact with a DJ and download content and play it inside the app when the user is offline. Silverlight desktop apps will run inside a secure sandbox environment, can detect whether the user is connected to the Internet, and have support for automatic updates.

In terms of video support, Silverlight 3 gets hardware-based graphics acceleration, new codec support for formats like H.264, AAC audio and MPEG-4, APIs to allow developers to plug in their own codecs, and improved analytics. New graphics capabilities include the ability to transform any image in three dimensions, pixel shader effects and upgrades to DeepZoom that integrate hardware acceleration to zoom far into a huge image. One app Microsoft demonstrated added effects like movement, shading, magnification, and embossing to a live video, images, and text controls.

Designers aren't the only ones who get new features in Silverlight 3. Microsoft has added support for deep linking so that users can send links to specific parts of a Silverlight app and to make the apps searchable by search engines. There's also improved text quality via ClearType support, multi-touch support, more than 100 new controls for things like charting and layout, and a number of new data-related features.

Microsoft rolled out a few key customers, including NBC, Netflix, and a company named Bondi that's building a back issue viewer for Rolling Stone and Playboy based on Silverlight. SAP also announced future Silverlight support. Silverlight has nowhere near the reach of Adobe Flash yet, but has seen 350 million downloads, according to Microsoft.

Microsoft also announced the next version of Expression Web and Expression Blend, tools for Web developers and designers.

Expression Web 3 includes a number of new features, with the main one being Super Preview, which allows developers to view previews of how their site will appear in multiple browsers. It uses browsers installed on their machines and a cloud service to provide renderings of the site even if they don't have certain browsers installed and even if the browser runs on a different operating system than the one they have.

Expression Blend 3, used for designing .Net and Silverlight application user interfaces, now includes a heavily-applauded feature called Sketchflow that allows designers to rapidly prototypes that can then be viewed by clients or business managers, who can even navigate the prototype via a feature called Behaviors that can demonstrate application workflows. Sketchflow will compete with products like Balsamiq.

Among the other products and announcements Microsoft made Wednesday at MIX include the release of ASP.Net Model View Controller 1.0, description of ASP.Net 4.0 and Visual Studio 2010, the release of a caching engine called Velocity, new extensions to its Internet Information Services Web server including a media streaming server called IIS Media Services, the Microsoft Web Platform Installer 2.0 (which lets Web developers install any of Microsoft's Web platform tools as well as a number of third-party Web app software like WordPress and Drupal and then piece them into a package of apps that will run on a Web server), Commerce Server 2009, and new features like FastCGI and PHP support for the Azure Services Platform.

Microsoft is widely expected to release the final version of Internet Explorer 8 on Thursday during the second day of Mix.

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