Silverlight 4 Debuts with Killer Demos at PDC09

Wow! Just Wow. That about sums up the Silverlight 4 debut during ScottGu's keynote, here on day two of PDC09. The demos were killer, and what is even more amazing is how much progress has been made in delivering new capabilities in just a few months since the release of Silverlight 3. And of course, RIA Services got some first class exposure in the context of Silverlight 4 ... RAD for RIA. More on that in the next post.

There is no substitute for checking out the keynote video, and the killer demos, one after another… quite literally. Check it out once its online. I'll pick out three of my favorite demos that I especially want to call out.

Web cam, microphone and device access - the ability to get the raw input stream (video, audio) and data from external devices/peripherals is going to unlock all sorts of new scenarios, for collaboration, scanning documents, and bar codes, and creating fun consumer experiences.

HTML Integration - now Silverlight apps can tap in into all the HTML content out there, and not only display HTML in an interactive browser control, but also use HTML content as a brush to paint any Silverlight control. The demo featured the Bing page alive within the Silverlight application, and then used to paint a set of pieces in a puzzle game.

If that wasn't enough, whats possible is Silverlight hosting HTML hosting Flash, that is playing a video, while the live rendering is broken into a zigsaw puzzle, that can be put together using touch input. Whew!

RIA Services - Silverlight has many features that make it real for business applications, including printing support, drag/drop, right click, and copy/paste support. However the highlight (ok, I'll admit, I am biased) is the story around the ability to work with data end-to-end, perform queries, submit changes, perform validation, etc. by way of WCF RIA Services takes Silverlight beyond just consumer facing experiences and into Line of Business scenarios. Here is a link to the Contacts app.

Of course, the highlight was the end-to-end application: Facebook on Windows implemented as a trusted, out-of-browser Silverlight application. Great visuals, smooth animation, nice integration with Facebook APIs, ability to work with photos, videos, the news stream, as well as raise notifications and integrate with USB devices plugged in into the computer. Simply wow. The application will be available as a reference sample. Something to learn from. Looking forward to that.

Silverlight brings a combination of just the right set of things for the next generation of rich internet application development - powerful, yet small runtime, a simple web deployment model, sandboxed execution with ability to go beyond the sandbox when needed, and a great set of core frameworks in terms of data, communication, presentation and fundamentals. V4 makes all that so much more compelling.

The best thing yet... you can start exploring and playing around with the beta bits today. Check out the tutorial videos that have already been posted. Looks like I need to start looking into providing a version of Silverlight.FX that uses some of the new Silverlight 4 features. I also really want to jump into and start writing a real end-to-end app that builds on these exciting new possibilities. Excited!