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Welcome to Silverlight 2 Knowledge Base!

The purpose of this site is to keep track of Silverlight resources and solutions.

Silverlight 2 was released to web (RTW) on Oct. 13, 2008. It is a major milestone for a new generation of rich internet application (RIA).

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Silverlight 3 Is Out

Silverlight 3 is released!.

If you are end user, go to http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/get-started/install/default.aspx to upgrade. The page will check if you have the latest version.

If you are developer with Silverlight 2 tool installed, you cannot install consumer runtime. You have to download and install the Silverlight 3 tool to upgrade to the latest developer runtime. Go to http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=9442b0f2-7465-417a-88f3-5e7b5409e9dd&displaylang=en to get Silverlight 3 tool for Visual Studio 2008 sp1. The setup will upgrade you to Silverlight 2.

You cannot develop Silverlight 2 and Silverlight 3 applications side-by-side with VS 2008 (while VS 2010 can). The closest way to switch between Silverlight 2 and Silverlight 3 development environment is to download the batch file to install/unintall Silverlight 2/3 from http://blogs.msdn.com/amyd/archive/2009/03/18/switching-from-silverlight-3-tools-to-silverlight-2-tools.aspx.

As usual, you can download other things from http://silverlight.net/getstarted/. Here are some additional downloads for Silverlight 3:
Is Silverlight 3 ready for business? Read this article and its comments.

Here are some blogs about Silverlight 3: Edit

What is new


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What is Silverlight 2

In Scott Guthries words:

Silverlight 2 is a cross-platform browser plugin that enables rich media experiences and .NET RIAs (Rich Internet Applications) within the browser.

Silverlight 2 is small in size (4.6MB) and takes only 4-10 seconds to install on a machine that doesn't already have it. It does not require the .NET Framework to be installed on a computer to run - the Silverlight setup download includes everything necessary to play video or run applications.

Silverlight provides a rich set of features for development including:


For details, please visit ScottGu's blog.

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How do I get Silverlight 2?

For end users, you might get Silverlight 2 (version 2.0.31005.0) at http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/resources/install.aspx. Users who previously got the Silverlight 2 beta 2 (a.k.a. the Olympic version, 2.0.30523.8) should upgrade to the latest version.

Developers who is trying to get started should first visit the the Silverlight community site.

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Silverlight 2 Resources


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Silverlight Known Issues


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About Us

This site was created by Li Chen, MCSD, MCSE, MCDBA, SCJP, SCJWCD, SCDJWS. I am a software developer in the Los Angeles area. Obviously, I would need lots of helps to keep these resouces up-to-date. If you would like to contribute to this site, please drop me a note and create an account.