What’s New in Silverlight 5

Now that Silverlight 5 has been Released To Web (RTW), let’s take a quick overview of what’s new in Silverlight 5


Here’s a summary of the new features in Silverlight 5, since it’s Beta release and since Silverlight 4.0

Performance Improvements
  • Improved XAML Parser Performance
  • Improved ClientHTTPWebRequest scenarios
  • Network Latency Improvements by using background thread
  • H/W accelerated rendering in IE9 windowless mode
  • Multicore JIT for speeding up startup time
  • 64-bit browser support on Windows
Binding Enhancements
  • Debug DataBinding statements (XAML)
  • Reuse Data Templates across application
  • DataContextChanged event to notify when DataContext has changed
  • Added PropertyChanged to the UpdateSourceTrigger enum
  • Binding on Style Setters
Media Support
  • New classes for sound effects with low latency audio playback
  • Variable Playback Rate
  • Hardware acceleration for H.264 media
  • DRM Key Rotation to support Live TV
  • Common remote control button commands for users to control media playback
Graphics Enhancements
  • Independent animations on separate threads
  • Core of the XNA Games Studio 4.0 graphics 3D API included
  • XNA 3D API provides XNA built-in effect, low-level GPU access, 3D primitives, multi-sample anti-aliasing etc.
  • Project Template support via Toolkit
Trusted Applications
  • Display Multiple windows in out-of-browser apps
  • Full-Trust in-browser for deployment and update scenarios
  • Unrestricted File System access
  • In-browser HTML support
  • P/Invoke support to call native windows API
Improved Text Support
  • Support for Pixel snapped text and Open Type fonts for better Text Clarity
  • Multi-Column Text and Linked Text Container support via the new RichTextBlock and RichTextBlockOverflow elements
  • Support for vector based printing
Input Support
  • Detect double-clicks using ClickCount property
  • Search Listbox/ComboBox using keyboard input
Other Support
  • Visual Studio Team Test support
  • New controls like PivotViewer and Drawing Surface
  • New capabilities for OpenFileDialog and SaveFileDialog, with default file name support

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About The Author

Suprotim Agarwal
Suprotim Agarwal, Developer Technologies MVP (Microsoft Most Valuable Professional) is the founder and contributor for DevCurry, DotNetCurry and SQLServerCurry. He is the Chief Editor of a Developer Magazine called DNC Magazine. He has also authored two Books - 51 Recipes using jQuery with ASP.NET Controls. and The Absolutely Awesome jQuery CookBook.

Follow him on twitter @suprotimagarwal.

3 comments:

elkadeem said...

what about tab index and place holder functions

Suprotim Agarwal said...

Do you mean the Control.TabIndex Property? It has been since version 3!

elkadeem said...

No i know that control.TabIndex property exist, but tabindex is very hard to implement in silverlight 4.
I have form that has one textbox and datagrid with 4 rows and each row that contain one textbox.

When focus the textbox and navigate it focus the last text box in the datagrid and it move down to up not up to down.

And many of samples for bad tabindex mechanism.