Developer Division

Windows 7 may have gotten much of the attention at the Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles on Tuesday, but on Wednesday other Microsoft programs got their turn to shine.

In keynote speeches by Steven Sinofsky, senior vice president of Microsoft's Windows and Windows Live Engineering Group; Scott Guthrie, vice president of Microsoft's .NET Developer Division; and others, attendees were shown demos of Microsoft's Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0.

Microsoft released Silverlight 2 on Monday, the second major version of its platform for creating and delivering advanced multimedia applications and experiences in a Web browser.

The company also said it will continue to back Silverlight-related open-source communities, with funding for advanced Silverlight development based on the Eclipse Foundation's integrated development environment (IDE) and with new controls to developers via the Silverlight Control Pack.