• Almost 30 bugs have been fixed.
• Rows containing focus no longer disappear when the ItemsSource changes
• Selection is now preserved when sorting
• ComboBox and other controls opening a popup no longer end editing mode for the DataGrid
• Buttons outside the DataGrid work as expected when they are clicked while the DataGrid is in editing mode
• Improved FrozenColumn behavior.
• Improved cell currency.
• Selection is updated at the time when the CurrentCellChanged event is raised

You can download the updated release by clicking here.

The Silverlight Toolkit is a collection of Silverlight controls, components and utilities made available outside the normal Silverlight release cycle. It adds new functionality quickly for designers and developers, and provides the community an efficient way to help shape product development by contributing ideas and bug reports. This first release includes full source code, unit tests, samples and documentation for 12 new controls covering charting, styling, layout, and user input.

The Silverlight Toolkit defines four Quality Bands that describe the stability and finish-level of each component. Below is a summary of where the components currently in the Silverlight Toolkit fall within the quality bands.

• Components in the Preview Quality Band
  • AutoCompleteBox
  • NumericUpDown
  • Viewbox
  • Expander
  • ImplicitStyleManager
  • Charting
    
    
• Components in the Stable Quality Band
  • TreeView
  • DockPanel
  • WrapPanel
  • Label
  • HeaderedContentControl
  • HeaderedItemsControl
    

• Expression Dark
• Expression Light
• Rainier Purple
• Rainier Orange
• Shiny Blue
• Shiny Red
  

Continuing my link posting Silverlight Tips, I have been keep a list of Silverlight Tips for reference from the Silverlight team that will help developers get started using Silverlight. Well, the team has released some new tips:

• Tip of the Day #40 -1.05 != 1.05 - Peril with Floating Point Comparisons.
• Tip of the Day #41 - Using Bookmarks in your Silverlight Application.
• Tip of the Day #42 - How to Create a Web Service for your Silverlight App.
• Tip of the Day #43 - Making it Snow in Silverlight.
• Tip of the Day #44 - Silverlight-enabled WCF Services versus ASMX Web Services.
• Tip of the Day #45 - Text Formatting with the TextBlock control
• Tip of the Day #46 - Font Support in Silverlight
• Tip of the Day #47 - How to Implement a Password Box
• Tip of the Day #48 - How to Implement a Combobox
• Tip of the Day #49 - How to Implement a Progress Bar
• Tip of the Day #50 - Main Game Loop Revisited!
• Tip of the Day #51 - How to Enable and Disable Controls
• Tip of the Day #52 - How to Popup a Browser Window
• Tip of the Day #53 - MessageBox is now Available in Silverlight 2
• Tip of the Day #54 - How to Develop with Silverlight Tools for Free
• Tip of the Day #55 - How to Apply Styles in Silverlight – Part I
• Tip of the Day #56 - Accessing the HTML DOM from Silverlight.
• Tip of the Day #57 - How to Dynamically Load a Silverlight Control within another Silverlight Control

Microsoft Corp. today announced the availability of Silverlight 2, one of the industry’s most comprehensive and powerful solutions for the creation and delivery of applications and media experiences through a Web browser. Silverlight 2 delivers a wide range of new features and tools that enable designers and developers to better collaborate while creating more accessible, more discoverable and more secure user experiences.

Microsoft also announced further support of open source communities by funding advanced Silverlight development capabilities with the Eclipse Foundation’s integrated development environment (IDE) and by providing new controls to developers with the Silverlight Control Pack (SCP) under the Microsoft Permissive License.

“We launched Silverlight just over a year ago, and already one in four consumers worldwide has access to a computer with Silverlight already installed,” said Scott Guthrie, corporate vice president of the .NET Developer Division at Microsoft. “Silverlight represents a radical improvement in the way developers and designers build applications on the Web. This release will further accelerate our efforts to make Silverlight, Visual Studio and Microsoft Expression Studio the preeminent solutions for the creation and delivery of media and rich Internet application experiences.”

Microsoft also will release the Silverlight Control Pack and publish on MSDN the technical specification for the Silverlight Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML) vocabulary. The SCP, which will augment the powerful built-in control set in Silverlight, will be released under the Microsoft Permissive License, an Open Source Initiative-approved license, and includes controls such as DockPanel, ViewBox, TreeView, Accordion and AutoComplete. The Silverlight XAML vocabulary specification, released under the Open Specification Promise (OSP), will better enable third-party ISVs to create products that can read and write XAML for Silverlight.

Delivering Features for Next-Generation Web Experiences

Highlights of new Silverlight 2 features include the following:

• .NET Framework support with a rich base class library. This is a compatible subset of the full .NET Framework.
• Powerful built-in controls. These include DataGrid, ListBox, Slider, ScrollViewer, Calendar controls and more.
• Advanced skinning and templating support. This makes it easy to customize the look and feel of an application.
• Deep zoom. This enables unparalleled interactivity and navigation of ultrahigh resolution imagery.
• Comprehensive networking support. Out-of-the-box support allows calling REST, WS*/SOAP, POX, RSS and standard HTTP services, enabling users to create applications that easily integrate with existing back-end systems.
• Expanded .NET Framework language support. Unlike other runtimes, Silverlight 2 supports a variety of programming languages, including Visual Basic, C#, JavaScript, IronPython and IronRuby, making it easier for developers already familiar with one of these languages to repurpose their existing skill sets.
• Advanced content protection. This now includes Silverlight DRM, powered by PlayReady, offering robust content protection for connected Silverlight experiences.
• Improved server scalability and expanded advertiser support. This includes new streaming and progressive download capabilities, superior search engine optimization techniques, and next-generation in-stream advertising support.
• Vibrant partner ecosystem. Visual Studio Industry Partners such as ComponentOne LLC, Infragistics Inc. and Telerik Inc. are providing products that further enhance developer capabilities when creating Silverlight applications using Visual Studio.
• Cross-platform and cross-browser support. This includes support for Mac, Windows and Linux in Firefox, Safari and Windows Internet Explorer.
   

More information and details about Silverlight 2 are available by reading the Silverlight 2 fact sheet at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/presskits/silverlight/default.mspx.

Get Silverlight 2

Silverlight 2 will be available for download on Tuesday, Oct. 14, at http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight. Customers already using a previous version of Silverlight will be automatically upgraded to Silverlight 2.

Microsoft has released RC0 for Silverlight 2 to allow developers to have time get used to the new changes before releasing to end users. Scott Guthrie posted a good overview of the updates that were included in the RC0 release. You can read a complete list of the breaking change from here.

 Here are some of the new changes in this release:

• PasswordBox control added
• ProgressBar control added
• ComboBox control added
• New control templates (they’re much cleaner than the previous ones IMHO)
• API changes here and there and elimination of some assemblies such as System.Wondows.Controls.Extended

Downloads:

• Visual Studio 2008 Tools RC0:  http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=129043
• Expression Blend SP1 RC0:  http://www.microsoft.com/expression/try-it/default.aspx?filter=prerelease 
• Windows Silverlight 2 Dev Runtime RC0:  http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=129011

Well, I get to be one of the lucky people that gets to go to the Microsoft PDC 2008 Conference in Los Angeles, CA on October 27-30. Since 1991, the Professional Developers Conference (PDC) has been Microsoft’s premier gathering of leading-edge developers and architects. Attend the PDC to understand the future of the Microsoft platform and to exchange ideas with fellow professionals. You’ll learn about upcoming products, meet Microsoft’s leaders and top engineers, and write some code.

At this year's conference, Microsoft will be giving a 160GB external USB2 hard drive with all of the bits from the conference to each attendee instead of a collection of DVDs as in the past. It is even rumored that a Beta version of Windows 7 will be included as well.

Channel 9 on MSDN has been producing a series of Countdown to PDC 2008 videos to help everyone get a great overview of what to expect this year at PDC. Here is just a few of the videos that you can watch about the upcoming conference:

• This is the Software + Services PDC: Mike Swanson
• By Developers, for Developers: Don Box and Chris Anderson
• Building Block Services, John Shewchuk
• Extending the Data Platform to the Cloud: Dave Campbell
• Amitabh Srivastava: Corporate Vice President of Cloud, Infrastructure, & Services