Microsoft has really put an effort into the newest version of Silverlight (v4), making it into a fully usable platform for RIA development. I suspect the release of Windows7 has freed up some more resources for the Silverlight team. Microsoft has addressed much of the critique of the previous versions of Silverlight. A lot of new controls, support for data-binding, MP4-video and a lot of development-tools makes Silverlight 4 a platform worth checking out for your next RIA-project. I have scratced a bit on the surface of this upcoming release, and here are some of the reasons why I am looking forward to start with Silverlight 4.

Silverlight 4 will enhance the building media applications and make the building of business applications a lot easier with the SharePoint integration posibilities and enhanced data binding capabilities. Printing is being flaunted as one of the major new features, often mentioned in the punch-line. I honestly have never noticed printing being absent, however it’s really on time to have this functionality in a version 4 . A bit cooler is perhaps that Silverlight 4 can take advantage of your webcam and microphone, and a brand new (or more correct: reinvented) Rich Text Area Control whitch promises the use of true Rich Text Format with bididrectional support for Arabic and Hebrew, functional hyperlinks and embedded images and improved styling. I think we are looking an a massive component here!

Both input from the keyboard and mouse has been improved, now allowing Asian key-sets and mouse wheel and right button (finally!). PNGs is now supported, as is MP4 .h264 video and AAC-LC audio with DRM. Silverlight 4 can also be used for multicasts streaming.

Finally a full support of Google Chrome, with promised 200% better start-up performance, is promised. It seems most of the problems addressed with Opera and Firefox already is fixed in version 3. There is no road-map for further fixing other browsers than Chrome. However, the Silverlight team is promising that all problems with browsers af any kind will be taken seriously.

New “Out-of-browser-experiences” includes resizing and repositioning the window. The concept of “Trusted Application” will allow Silverlight applications to install on a local computer, much like Adobe AIR. This will need the user concent on install, but will allow for access of file-system and cross-domain networking.

When it comes to tools Silverlight 4 promises 100% support in Visual studio 2010, WCF services (a kind of webservices), integration kits for improved data binding, especialy interesting for MakingWaves is the SharePoint integration. MEF architecture is introduced which support a more modularized development and intrestingly allows dynamically adding functionality after deployment, even when application is running!

This is a first look on this new version, which still is in Beta. However, there will probably be more features and tools to look forward to when the release date is coming up.