Silverlight 2 beta 2 coming this week

At TechEd today Bill Gates said that the second beta of Silverlight 2 will be available for download at the end of the week with a Go Live license. The Go Live license is similar to the one that was used late in the beta process for Silverlight 1 and it allows developers to roll out applications to production but with limited support from Microsoft.

At TechEd S. Somasegar demoed the beta 2 of Silverlight with a social networking application called Crossfader which can be used to share things like photos and music. According to Joe Wilcox, Somasegar focused on the the workflow between Silverlight and WPF as well as the benefits of XAML and using Visual Studio and Expression Studio.

I'm a big fan of the XAML model and I think it's going to be interesting to watch as the lines between Silverlight and WPF blur. I wasn't at TechEd but it sounds like the message around where to use Silverlight and where to use WPF is getting more pronounced. I think the ultimate workflow goal is to let developers and designers move quickly from Silverlight to WPF as the needs increase so the next beta may offer a picture of how easy it is to reuse and adapt the code and XAML from a Silverlight app to a WPF app.

Update: Brad Becker provides some of the new features in beta 2:

UI Framework: Beta 2 includes improvements in animation support, error handling and reporting, automation and accessibility support, keyboard input support, and general performance. This release also provides more compatibility between Silverlight and WPF.

Rich Controls: Beta 2 includes a new templating model called Visual State Manager that allows for easier templating for controls. Other features include the introduction of TabControl, text wrapping and scrollbars for TextBox, and for DataGrid additions include Autosize, Reorder, Sort, performance increases and more. Most controls are now in the runtime instead of packaged with the application.

Networking Support: Beta 2 includes improved Cross Domain support and security enhancements, upload support for WebClient, and duplex communications (“push” from server to Silverlight client).

Rich Base Class Library: Beta 2 includes improved threading abilities, LINQ-to-JSON, ADO.NET Data Services support, better support for SOAP, and various other improvements to make networking and data handling easier.

Deep Zoom: Beta 2 introduces a new XML-based file format for Deep Zoom image tiles, as well as a new MultiScaleTileSource that enables existing tile databases to utilize Deep Zoom. Better, event driven notification for zoom/pan state is another improvement in Silverlight 2 Beta 2.