Two years back Microsoft and Nokia announced their commitment to make Silverlight available for certain Nokia phones running the Symbian operating system. Microsoft now finally releasing the Beta version of Silverlight for Symbian at last week’s Mix Web Conference.
Silverlight is a cross-browser, cross-platform implementation of the .NET Framework for Silverlight developers to build media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web on desktop computers, is also available for Nokia S60 5th Edition devices such as Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, Nokia N97 and Nokia N97 Mini.
Silverlight includes a runtime that is optimized to display content on memory-constrained devices. Silverlight support for Nokia S60 5th Edition devices includes:
- The ability to view Silverlight applications in the mobile browser.
- Tools to build Silverlight applications that target devices.
You can create Silverlight-based applications for devices by using Expression Blend 2 (free trial version), Visual Web Developer 2008 Express with SP1, or Visual Studio 2008 SP1 with Silverlight Tools for Visual Studio 2008 SP1. Application deployment on IIS is supported in this release.
The current Beta allows you to run Silverlight applications and content on the Symbian S60 5th Edition browser, so that means touch screen Symbian devices. There’s still a way to go become everything is finalized, but it’s certainly a step in the right direction.