Jeff Prosise joins the show to discuss the details surrounding the new LOB features of Silverlight 4 beta.

Silverlight & WPF

• Silverlight getting better and better
• Delta between WPF and Silverlight is getting smaller and smaller
• Jeff and Craig discuss the question of “will Silverlight kill WPF”?
• Jeff makes the case that Silverlight is one of the best things to every happen to WPF
• Silverlight is for browser applications (especially when client diversity exists)

Printing Support

• Pages are rasterized before sent to the print queue
• Simple API used to detect multiple page
• Printed page does not have to be the XAML shown to the user

Webcam & Microphone Support

• Uses OS hosted device support
• API makes listing devices easy
• Easy to take a snapshot, but processing video is more involved
• Jeff hopes to provide infrastructure code to help process raw media streams if the Silverlight team doesn’t add it formally to the framework

File System Access

• Only available for out of browser applications running with elevated permissions

Elevated Permissions

• Silverlight transparency model
• In Silverlight 4 has expanded file system access in contrast to what is available in Silverlight 3

COM Automation on Hosted Machine

• COM Automation makes integration with programs like Office a painless experience
• Only available for Windows machines
• Jeff has a sample to demonstrate COM automation by vocalizing exception messages

HTML Hosting

• Elevated permissions are not required, but an out of browser application is needed
• Elevated permissions are needed to access cross domain downloads
• Silverlight’s HTML rendering control is it’s own browser and is not dependent on any other browser

The Future?

• Expanded device access
• Full 3D support

From Jeff’s Blog

• Silverlight 4's New Local File System Support
• Silverlight 4's New COM Automation Support
• Silverlight 4's New Clipboard Support
• Silverlight 3's New Application Extension Services

Jeff’s Upcoming Engagements

• Silverlight Precon at TechEd in New Orleans
• DevWeek
• Let’s Have a Silverlight Party