Microsoft's Silverlight 2 Features Advanced Multimedia

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.

The Eclipse funding is to France-based Soyatec, an IT solutions provider, for a project to integrate Silverlight development into the Eclipse IDE and to release it as an open project.

'One in Four' Worldwide

Scott Guthrie, Microsoft .NET Developer Division corporate vice president, said that, although Silverlight was launched just a year ago, "already one in four consumers worldwide has access to a computer" with it installed. He added that the newest version of Silverlight will accelerate the company's efforts to make this platform, Visual Studio, and Microsoft Expression Studio "the preeminent solutions for the creation and delivery of media and rich Internet application experiences."

The growing ecosystem for Silverlight, Microsoft said, actually is approaching 50 percent penetration in some countries, and there are currently more than 150 partners and "tens of thousands of applications."

As examples, it cited the use of Silverlight on NBCOlympics.com during the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, as well as on Olympic sites from broadcasters in France, the Netherlands, Russia and Italy. It also noted that the technology is being used by CBS College Sports, Blockbuster, Hard Rock Café International, Yahoo Japan, AOL and Toyota.

In its release, Microsoft quoted Blockbuster CIO Keith Morrow as saying that Silverlight 2's new data grids, advanced skinning capabilities, and support for the .NET Framework has helped build a "a cutting-edge, rich Internet application" for searching Blockbuster's content database, watch movie trailers, buy or rent movies, and access movie reviews.

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