The new software can be downloaded now. Microsoft announced last night that a new version of its Silverlight software available for download. This new edition, version 4, is not considered to be as great update to version 3, but still includes a lot of new functionality.
This includes support for printing and hardware as webcams and microphones, support for multicast networks, extended sandbox for trusted applications and a lot more. The comparison between the functionality of the four different Silverlight releases can be found on this page.
Silverlight is both a browser plug-in, as with version 4 also has official support for Google Chrome, and a runtime environment for standalone applications. It is also the main programming interface for Windows 7 Phone Silverlight 4 is available for both Windows and Intel-based Mac OS X.
Silverlight technology is also available for Linux, but when called Moonlight and developed primarily by Novell as an open source project. Moonlight hangs slightly by Silverlight when comes to functionality.
To develop applications with Silverlight 4-specific functionality requires that you use Visual Studio 2010, which was launched earlier this week. The other tools that Microsoft will offer developers of Silver Light 4-applications, specifically the Silverlight Tools 4, RIA Services and Expression Blend 4 is only available as release candidates.
Silverlight 4 can be downloaded from this page. In addition to Google Chrome, supports the Firefox and IE 7 and 8 for Windows XP and newer. On the Mac supports Firefox and Safari.
