Silverlight 4 – News from MIX10

This just in from MIX10; well, I just found out anyways.  Silverlight 4 has released the Silverlight 4 RC (release candidate).

Want the new stuff? Well, here is how to get it:

• Visual Studio 2010 RC or Visual Web Developer Express 2010 RC
• Silverlight 4 Tools for Visual Studio 2010
• Expression Blend 4 beta
• Silverlight Toolkit
• WCF RIA Services plus Toolkit

What is in the latest release?  Well, we have some new stuff, some improvements and some breaking changes.

First the BREAKING CHANGES:

I am not going to bother regurgitating everything so you can follow this link to read them.

Next, the new stuff:

• Silverlight silent installs: This one provides silent installs of you out-of-browser application with the use of the sllauncher.exe.
• Custom window chrome for trusted applications – you can now customize your application chrome (outer window border) to your liking.
• Pinned full screen mode (if you have two screens pay attention to this one).  Don’t you just hate it when your watching Silverlight TV in full screen mode and when click somewhere else on your other screen your full screen video goes away?  I know I do.  Well  no more I say!  You can now pin full screen Silverlight apps and go do other stuff.
• WCF RIA Services Toolkit – now you get LinqToSql DomainService, SOAP endpoint, JSON endpoint, and ASP.NET DomaindataSource.  Hooray!
• ContextMenu control – now I hope you know what this is, if not send me an email and I will explain it to you.
• XAP signing – you can now sign your xap so the install prompt looks less threatening.

Now, the changes:

• User consent dialog (the dialog a user sees when you ask to access their webcam or clipboard) – Users can now save their answer by selecting the “Remember my answer” checkbox on the dialog.  They can also remove the permission by using the Silverlight configuration dialog.
• Com Interop – the ComAutomationFactory has been renamed to the AutomationFactory.
• Printing – Developers can now determine the page size, and printable area.  Also, the document name is a required parameter in the Print method.
• RichTextBox (the control formaly known as RichTextBoxArea) – Has been renamed to RichTextBox.  You can get the XAML that makes up the underlying paragraph and runs of the richtext from the control by accessing the RichTextBox.Xaml property.  The API also adds the ability to determine the location of the current text and know what is selected.
• WebBrowser control – the Htmlbrush was renamed to WebBrowserBrush

I will keep my ear to the wall for some more goodies from MIX10.