Microsoft Silverlight 4 Tools Released

Working with either the Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 or Visual Web Developer Express tools, Silverlight 4 Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio supports capabilities such as Silverlight 4’s elevated trust and out-of-browser application functions. Other Silverlight 4 capabilities supported include Style Intellisense, for modifying XAML styles; Data Source Selector, for modifying data source information; and Go To Value Definition, for navigating directly from controls on a page to styles applied to them.

Silverlight 4 Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 includes many essential features to help you work with your Silverlight 4 applications:

• Support for targeting Silverlight 4 in the Silverlight designer and project system
• RIA Services application templates and libraries to simplify access to your data services (check out this Silverlight.tv
• video and whitepaper giving full details)
• Support for Silverlight 4 elevated trust and out-of-browser applications
• Enhanced support for other new Silverlight 4 features, including:
  • Working with Implicit Styles
    • Go To Value Definition – navigate directly from controls on your page to styles that are applied to them.
    • Style Intellisense – easily modify styles you already have in XAML
  • Working with Data Source Window outputs
    • Data Source Selector – easily select and modify your data source information
    • Grid Row and Column context menu – Add, remove, and re-sort DSW outputs and other Grid layouts
    • Thickness Editor for editing Margins, Padding etc
• Sample Data Support – see your item templates and bindings light up at design time
• Working with Silverlight 4 Out-of-Browser applications
  • Automatically launch and debug your OOB app from inside the IDE
  • Specify XAP signing for trusted OOB apps
  • Set the OOB window characteristics

Silverlight is Microsoft’s entrant into the rich Internet application space, with rivals such as Adobe Systems Flash, and newcomer HTML 5 – which has been emerging as a potential rival and eventual replacement for single-vendor technologies such as Flash and Silverlight.

Siverlight 4 Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 can be downloaded from here