Silverlight 5 new features

As all of us know silverlight5 has been released at MIX2011 by Scott Gu. If you want to start exploring SL5 features its time to start and do it now. Sl5 moves development more towards WPF, so some of the benefits that WPF developers are enjoyed that have been now added to SL5.

How to get Started with this Developer’s product ?

• Install VS2010 SP1 from www.silverlight.net
• Install Silverlight5 Beta Tools for VS2010 from here
• Optionally install the Expression Blend Preview does SL5 Beta

Binding

• We can place Breakpoints in XAML for debugging. In the editor directly can put breakpoint and debug in editor check or error messages.
• Ancestor Relative Source for Binding to a property on parent control.
• Binding now possible in style setters
  Implicit Data Templates

Media

• New support for Low latency sound effects using the Sound Effect API. No more round robin queue. It’s fast and very responsive. Since the sound effects, sound effect instances will be reuse sound effects inside the applications.
• We have Variable Speed Playback ( “Trick Play”). There is no audio support for beta only. It will be there in RC/ RTM
• H 264 media is now decoded as hardware for a huge performance boost.

Text

• Text tracking and leading control
• Linked Rick Text Boxes for seamless workflow and multi –column text

Input

• Click Count property for multi-click support, Now we can get number of clicks user have done
  • For example Double click
• Listbox / ComboBox controls have type-ahead text searching

Full-Trust Applications

• Through Group Policy settings, elevated trust available in browser foe signed applications
  • Including keyboard support in full-screen mode support kiosk-type applications
  • Windows-only for Beta
• Un restricted File System Access
  • No longer restricted to “My Documents”
• Native OS Windows Support

Graphics

• Graphics stack improved using lessons learned from mobile, such as independent animations.
• XNA 3D API for low-level access.
• SL5 has XNA .3D API for low-level access to GPU, vertex shades and 3D primitives
• Also works as an immediate mode 2d API

Performance Improvements

• Improved XAML parse times for User Controls and Resource Dictionaries
• 90% performance improvement in ClientHttpWebRequest scenarios
• Hardware accelerated rendering in IE9, windowless (SL5 applications ) mode using the new SurfacePresenter APIs

Others

• Create custom markup extensions
• In-Browser HTML support
• Default filename in the Save File Dialog
• Many more fixes and improvements throughout the product

Seems that Ms has taken the feedback and implemented the same things that developers or customers asked for. I am exciting about this release and start playing with SL5 and if you can find any bugs in Beta, you can post at connect.microsoft.com for the fix and support.

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