Last week we finally released v1.0 RTW of our Silverlight/WPF API. Today at our User Conference in San Diego, Jack Dangermond announced, that it even will be free for non-commercial use. The API will run on both v2 and v3 of Silverlight.

Furthermore today we released the entire source code for the toolkit assembly on CodePlex: http://esrisilverlight.codeplex.com

Also today at the Windows Partner Conference, we announced MapIt, a mapping solution running on a combination of SQL Server 2008, IIS and Silverlight/WPF and also with integration into Sharepoint. You can download a free 60-day evaluation of MapIt today. I encourage you to go see some of the demonstration videos – especially if you are new to GIS, this video could be an eye-opener to what information is hidden in your existing business intelligence.

If you are at the ESRI User Conference this week, come by the Silverlight Island in the showcase area and talk some Silverlight. I’ll be there most of the time Tuesday through Thursday. I’ll also be joining Rex Hansen and Art Haddad at the .NET SIG Tuesday evening, and the Silverlight intro sessions Wednesday and Thursday. Also watch Rich’s Demo Theater session which will demonstrate the ESRI Map Web Part for SharePoint and MapIt (the title on this session is incorrect).

Silverlight 3 RTW is finally out !

Find the downloads here:

Expression Blend 3 with Sketchflow

Silverlight 3 Software Development Kit (SDK)

Silverlight 3 Tools for Visual Studio 2008 SP 1

or just go here to install the plugin: http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/resources/install.aspx

While most of the new SL3 features has already been announced with the beta release, below are some of the new stuff that wasn’t available in the beta.

Mouse Wheel support !

We finally get native mouse wheel support with Silverlight 3. This means support for wheel in full screen, out of browser, when the DOM bridge is disabled, and most importantly no more ugly JavaScript hacks to get this working. The API is exactly the same as in WPF.

Multi Touch Support.

Scott Guthrie announced this feature a few months ago, but it wasn’t included in the beta. Below is what this new API looks like:

Compared to the Surface API it looks like a fairly low-level version. The touch points you get will tell you if the user started touching, let go or is moving the finger, and also has methods for getting the element that is directly under the touch point. It’s up to the developer to then convert these gestures to something meaningful. The new behaviors API might come in handy for streamlining this.

Our prototype lab has already created some cool demos using Microsoft’s Surface table and our WPF API, and hopefully we can easily extend that to our Silverlight API as well.

Support for Alpha in 8bit PNG.

To me this is huge! We can finally start optimizing the download size by using PNG8 images and still have an alpha channel. Unfortunately Microsoft forgot 1, 2 and 4 bit, which a lot of optimized PNGs end up being. Hopefully that’ll come in a later version (judging from the PNG spec, there really isn’t much difference between 1, 2, 4 and 8 bits).

Out of browser changes

Out of browser configuration has been changed, and can now be configured using the UI tool in Visual Studio project properties:

Clear-type support

All browsers now get clear-type rendering of fonts.