Microsoft’s cross-platform multimedia engine Silverlight 1.0 has only been shipping since September, yet they’ve gone ahead and announced a v2 beta is on the way:
Silverlight 1.0 focused on enabling rich media scenarios in a browser, and supports a JavaScript/AJAX programming model. We are shortly going to release the first public beta of Silverlight 2, which will be a major update of Silverlight that focuses on enabling Rich Internet Application (RIA) development. Silverlight 2 does not require the .NET Framework to be installed on a computer in order to run. The Silverlight setup download includes everything necessary to enable all the above features on a vanilla Mac OSX or Windows machine. The Beta1 release of Silverlight 2 is 4.3MB in size, and takes 4-10 seconds to install on a machine that doesn’t already have it.
In other Silverlight news, my pals over at jkOnTheRun noticed that Silverlight is installed with Microsoft Office 2008 on OS X. (I’m still waiting for my copy…)
Why should you care? Netflix says 2008 is the year their movie streaming service comes to OS X. They currently utilize Microsoft DRM and demonstrated a Silverlight client last spring…
i will seriously have a party when netflix streaming comes to the mac.
dave, i have office 2008, its noticeably snappier than 2004 but still a little sluggish. don’t get your hopes up for entourage…
Yeah, I’m pretty bummed – I’ve read all the Entourage coverage and am disappointed it’s not real Exchange support. That was my primary reason for upgrading. Actually, I haven’t even run/installed Mac Office on my laptop(s) in the last few months and have been editing in Win Office under Fusion. Oh well, my mom (a recent Mac convert) will put Word 2008 to use.