Software major Microsoft Corp. has scheduled a conference call on Monday, reaching a step closer to announcing among other products, the release of its Silverlight 2.0 browser plug in, its’ rival to Adobe’s Flash.
With all heads turned towards official release of Silverlight 2.0 around the company’s Professional Developers’ Conference (PDC), Microsoft has issued the first runtime and tools release candidates.
The software giant has scheduled a conference call for 9 a.m. PDT with developer division executive Scott Guthrie.
Microsoft has so far not issued a confirmed time frame for the concluding release, but according to a press release, Scott Guthrie, the corporate vice president of Microsoft’s .NET Developer Division, says that the company “will make a significant announcement about Microsoft Silverlight” on Monday, October 13 at 9AM PDT.
Silverlight 2 Beta 1 release in March, and the Beta 2 was arrived in June, and while many looked forward for the final version later this summer, Microsoft instead sent out a slightly newer build in July. The official response about the release of the final Silverlight 2 has only been “when it is ready,” but late last month Silverlight 2 RC0 was released to help developers transition to the final Silverlight 2 code.
The Silverlight 2.0 package is available as an add-in for English-language versions of Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack (SP) 1 and Visual Web Developer 2008 Express SP1. The kit allows you to build Silverlight 2.0 applications using Microsoft’s C# and Visual Basic.
A Microsoft representative declined to comment on the impending announcement, but a source informed CNET News that the completion of Silverlight 2.0 is among the topics of discussion. Microsoft released Beta 2 of the software in June, while a “release candidate” version was offered up last month.
Before you get too excited, the software maker it seems that has more to say than just the completion of version 2.0, although Guthrie has warned this is the developer runtime edition of Silverlight 2.0 only, with the regular end-user edition due later this fall.
Guthrie said the release gives existing developers time to update their applications with the Silverlight 2.0 APIs before sites are allowed to go live.
“There are some breaking changes between Beta2 and this RC, and we want to make sure that existing sites can update to the final release quickly once the final release is out,” Guthrie said. “As such, you can only use the RC for development right now — you cannot go live with the new APIs until the final release is shipped (which will be soon though),” Guthrie said.
Mary Jo Foley has made the same conclusions regarding a release next week. Also, an unofficial document describing the main differences between Beta 2 and the final version has trickled in, courtesy of the Silverlight SDK blog.
The release candidate can be downloaded from here.