Microsoft Silverlight 4 beta released and available for download

Posted by Mohammad Farzan Hussain

Today, the beta version of Silverlight 4 (build 4.0.41108.0) has been released by Microsoft at Professional Developers Conference 2009 (PDC09) and is now available for download. Silverlight 4 beta will enhance the user experience, performance, rendering and speed of browsers.

Silverlight 4 beta was tested with several practical software and applications. They used a web-based service with Silverlight that can capture images and modify it in real-time. The Silverlight was also tested with a YouTube, they play a video and scatter the page, but the video was still playing in a real-time.

Microsoft has also discovered some statistics about Silverlight 3 that, now almost 45 percent of all devices that connects to internet are using it worldwide.

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Features of Silverlight 4 beta

Below are some of the features of Silverlight 4 beta

Comprehensive printing support enabling hardcopy reports and documents as well as a virtual print view, independent of screen content.
WCF RIA Services introduces enterprise class networking and data access for building n-tier applications including transactions, paging of data, WCF and HTTP enhancements.
Localization enhancements with Bi-Directional text, Right-to-Left support and complex scripts such as Arabic, Hebrew and Thai and 30 new languages.
The .NET Common Runtime (CLR) now enables the same compiled code to be run on the desktop and Silverlight without change.
Enhanced databinding support increases flexibility and productivity through data grouping/editing and string formatting within bindings.
Managed Extensibility Framework supports building large composite applications.
Exclusive tooling support for Silverlight, new in Visual Studio 2010. Including a full editable design surface, drag & drop data-binding, automatically bound controls, datasource selection, integration with Expression Blend styling resources, Silverlight project support and full IntelliSense.

Here is the full detail about the new features of Silverlight 4 beta version.

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