Silverlight 2 RC0 released

So, today released Silverlight 2 RC0 (release candidate) . Please note that only the developer version has been released (Silverlight 2 Dev Runtime). There are currently no end-user versions available. This is done to give developers the opportunity to translate their applications to the final version of the Silverlight 2 API. There are several incompatibilities between Beta2 and RC and Microsoft wants to be sure that existing sites using Silverlight 2 will have time to upgrade and will work correctly with the final release. In the meantime, you can use the RC version only for development, and it will be possible to distribute applications after the release of the final version, which will take place shortly.

Here are links where you can download Silverlight 2 RC0, Visual Studio 2008 Tools RC0, and Expression Blend 2 SP1 RC0. I would like to note that the Expression Blend 2 SP1 RC0 given by reference is only a Service Pack, and in order to work with Silverlight 2 in Expression Blend 2 you need to first install this package yourself.

Visual Studio 2008 Tools RC0
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Expression Blend 2 SP1 RC0

Expression Blend 2

Windows Silverlight 2 Dev Runtime RC0

Changes between Beta 2 and RC

The release candidate includes a huge number of bug fixes, and work has been carried out to optimize performance. In addition, some differences in the class library between Silverlight and the full .NET Framework are eliminated. Most of these differences are not great, but they were quite a lot. You can read about changes in the API by clicking on this link or downloading this document .
The styles (that is, the appearance has changed) by default of standard controls have also been updated.

New Controls (Controls)

In the RC version you will find many improvements in controls, network interaction, data caching, rendering, multimedia subsystem and other components.
Over the next few months, many new controls will be released. And at the moment in the RC version there are three new controls. These are ComboBox, ProgressBar and PasswordBox, which are added directly to the Silverlight runtime (the runtime still weighs about 4.6 MB and is installed in a few seconds).

Here is an example of using new controls:

<PasswordBox x: Name = "Password1" Width = "100" Height = "22" Margin = "10" />

<ProgressBar x: Name = "Progress1" Width = "200" Height = "15" Value = "40" Margin = "10" />

<ComboBox x: Name = "ComboBox1" Width = "100" Height = "20" Margin = "10">
<ComboBoxItem Content = "One" />
<ComboBoxItem Content = "Two" />
<ComboBoxItem Content = "Three" />
</ Combobox>

And this is how they look by default:



According to ScottGu's Blog .