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When Will Silverlight Ship?

I have received a number of emails asking when Silverlight will ship; and I’ve promised to look into it for a number of folks who very much need to know.  Here is what I found out…

Mature man with blue shirt, closed mouthWhile the incredible success of the use of Silverlight in facilitating the viewing of the Olympics and the Democratic convention speak to the solidity of Silverlight 2 and to the very high standards we’ve set, we’re not quite ready to make any announcements. (sorry).

Please be assured that we totally understand how much you need to know the date, but as has been true all along, when we announce a date we want it to be a date you can count on, and we are working hard on getting you that date as soon as we possibly can.


Where Has Liberty Gone?

While I have you, let me apologize for the recent slow down in information coming from Liberty Central.  I was on vacation for much of August (and, as many of you know, dealing with family “stuff”) and I’ll be “out of office” for much of September: I’m in Redmond this week, and will be in England and Ireland from the 14th to the 25th (Remix, Bristol, Dublin and Ulster).

Once I return, I hope to ramp up a significant set of more advanced videos, supplemented by tutorials, web-casts, and blog posts, and then venture into a couple new approaches. The goal will be to meet the needs of those of you who want to go beyond the fundamentals, while still ensuring that the “on ramps” to Silverlight are kept in good condition as programmers arrive. I have a long list of advanced topics from your suggestions and from talking with folks here, and Tim and I are looking at a lot of cool ways to get that information out.

In the meantime, please be sure to catch my next webcast on September 10: Creating Skinnable Custom Controls.

Published Wednesday, September 03, 2008 8:50 AM by jesseliberty

Comments

# re: When Will Silverlight Ship?

Given the number of bugs I encounter in a relatively small application.. I hope there will be a RC or beta 3 before RTM/RTW..

Wednesday, September 03, 2008 10:05 AM by avbersSL

# re: When Will Silverlight Ship?

I agree with the previous comment.  I want to see a release candidate before I'm going to buy in to a final release.

Wednesday, September 03, 2008 12:36 PM by CleverCoder

# re: When Will Silverlight Ship?

I'm willing to bet a beer that they'll announce the RTM release at the Mix 09 conference, together with IE8 RTM.

Wednesday, September 03, 2008 12:51 PM by Odegaard

# re: When Will Silverlight Ship?

Hi Jesse,

Thanks for the info.

I realize that this is not within your control; however, please forward this to the appropriate individual.

Most of us are developers so we certainly understand the difficulties of predicting when a project will be finished; however, we also have to deal with others who need to synch their efforts with our schedule - such as marketing; we also have budgets and timelines to worry about.

I understand that schedules can and do slip; however, it is my personal opinion that Microsoft could at least give us a target schedule - at least some idea.  It would be fine to update that schedule as things change - we would understand.

Scott promised us a go-live license before MIX08; however, not only was the go-live license not forth coming but we are not being given any target date when we might get it.

I am gambling and putting all of my development effort into Silverlight and as of now I have no idea if I should expect a go-live license around September 6th (about 3 months for the last release) or by Christmas or by MIX09.

I simply don't understand why Microsoft cannot provide just a little more insight into the schedule.

Please ignore the above frustration.

Best regard,

David

Wednesday, September 03, 2008 2:38 PM by davidjjon77

# re: When Will Silverlight Ship?

I am in the same position with my developement efforts and look forward to a target date

Wednesday, September 03, 2008 4:19 PM by dsweb329

# re: When Will Silverlight Ship?

I am eager to know when it will RTM as well - I am at the start of a big RIA project and I need to advise my client on picking Silverlight or Flash. I don't want them to get caught waiting an unknown length of time for the final release. And I REALLY don't want to work in Flash!

Wednesday, September 03, 2008 5:27 PM by miantosca

# re: When Will Silverlight Ship?

I've tryed to use duplex service but i have some problems... i hope in next release it is stable.

I hope also to see moore examples about using this new feature...

Thursday, September 04, 2008 11:00 AM by Babba

# re: When Will Silverlight Ship?

Same here - I'm in the preparation phase of the development of RIA application and I have to choose the technology for it. With the unknown dates it's a difficult decision - I really want to use 'light but my management considers Flex also. ... So, I inclined them to WPF which is not really a perfect solution.

Thursday, September 04, 2008 11:06 AM by alvipeo

# re: When Will Silverlight Ship?

Although Microsoft pretends it doesn't have deadlines for products, it certainly has target timelines. (Would anything ever ship without *some* pressure?)

You can safely predict that the PDC keynotes will include a few phrases that start with "That's why I'm announcing today the release of...."

Given that Silverlight 2 beta 2 was effectively in production use during the Olympics, it's not a big stretch to suggest an official Silverlight 2 release to Web (RTW) on October 27th at 8:30 a.m. (PST) in LA when Ray Ozzie takes to the stage for his keynote.

BTW, you can also watch book publishing dates for clues on when a Microsoft product is coming out. Book publishers have an uncanny knack of predicting months in advance "when the product is ready to ship" - even if Microsoft doesn't. <grin>

Ken

Thursday, September 04, 2008 3:28 PM by Ken Cox [MVP]

# re: When Will Silverlight Ship?

I noticed Liberty and Heuer's SL2 book date on Amazon jumped from Nov 08 to Feb 09.  That's scary if Ken is correct.

Thursday, September 04, 2008 9:58 PM by shaggygi

# re: When Will Silverlight Ship?

Having been burned by that agressive schedule posted earlier, it looks like MS is twice shy.

Add to that the fact that there are so many show stopping issues, rich text, printing, WPF compatibility, XAMLWriter, Visual Studio Designer, VS stability, Drawing support, and many more, it's clear that just being competitive to Flex is going to be tough.

The Olympics and the DNC were essentially missed opportunities.  With a chance to seed SL to a lot of users, they were seeded with a version that will have a ton of breaking changes.

Developers need to be VERY careful with SL right now.  If you are building small stuff, you're probably ok.  If you're trying to build a large app, you really have to watch that you use things that you determine are most likely to not change.

I think the breaking changes may be worse than the last change from Beta 1 to Beta 2.  It could get real ugly(lol).

Friday, September 05, 2008 2:55 PM by samcov

# re: When Will Silverlight Ship?

Two comments to respond to. First the slippage in the date of the book I'm writing with Tim has nothing to do with the release date of Silverlight; you have my word. It has to do with a publishing decision on quality vs. time to market and making sure that the book is, frankly, the best book I've ever written; up to everyone's expecttions and (I hope) one of the very best books on Silverlight. That is taking longer than I'd have guessed.

As for the Go-Live license, I'm very confused; as far as I know a broad commercial go-live license was made available with Silverlight2 Beta 2.

Saturday, September 06, 2008 4:22 PM by jesseliberty

# re: When Will Silverlight Ship?

In Scott Guthries Blog Post for Silverlight beta 2 he has mentioned that there will be Release Candidate Before RTM.

Tuesday, September 09, 2008 1:09 AM by kamii47

# re: When Will Silverlight Ship?

Silverlight is awesome, and I look forward to its release--there are bugs, yes, and there will be when it's released, as there are with an 1.0 product (and really even though it is 2.0 it is more like 1.0 because of how radically augmented it is from 1.0).

Thanks for your hard work on this, Microsoft guys!

Tuesday, September 09, 2008 9:56 AM by dsr9996

# re: When Will Silverlight Ship?

Further to my speculation on the RTM of Silverlight 2 on October 27th, note Telerik's roadmap:

"The official release of RadControls for Silverlight is planned for Q3 2008, the beginning of November."

www.telerik.com/.../roadmap.aspx

BTW, the Telerik SL2 controls are awesome!

Ken

Tuesday, September 09, 2008 11:20 AM by Ken Cox [MVP]

# re: When Will Silverlight Ship?

Scott Guthrie says Silverlight 2 "will ship later this fall."

www.microsoft.com/.../09-09silverlight.mspx

Tuesday, September 09, 2008 8:10 PM by Ken Cox [MVP]

# re: When Will Silverlight Ship?

Nice Info, That Mean's in betwenn September to december there will be final RTM .

Let see any Release Candidate comes or not

Wednesday, September 10, 2008 12:52 AM by kamii47

# Silverlight 2 Will Ship "Later This Fall" - On Oct 27 or Nov 22?

Many architects and developers have enterprise projects in the works that depend on the release of Silverlight

Wednesday, September 10, 2008 5:01 PM by WebLog of Ken Cox

# re: When Will Silverlight Ship?

Agreed with WebLog of Ken Cox.  

Friday, September 12, 2008 1:44 AM by kamii47

# re: When Will Silverlight Ship?

will RSA be implemented in .Security ?

Friday, September 12, 2008 8:10 AM by DrewPierce