The open-source Mono Project sponsored by Novell has delivered Moonlight 4, the latest version of the Linux implementation of Microsoft's Silverlight.
Novell's open-source Mono Project has delivered a
preview version of Moonlight
4, the latest version of the Linux implementation of Microsoft's Silverlight
developer platform.
This release gives Firefox and Google Chrome users on Linux
access to the latest Silverlight content and enables developers to take
advantage of the newest features of Silverlight on all platforms.
In a statement, Miguel de Icaza, Mono Project founder and
Developer Platform vice president at Novell, said, "Our team has worked
tirelessly to get Moonlight to version parity with Silverlight 3-finally
bringing the latest development and delivery capabilities for visually rich
applications to Linux. Now that we've reached this milestone, we are looking to
complete the 4.0 APIs."
Having delivered Moonlight with full support for all prior
versions of Silverlight and preview support for Silverlight 4, including
support of Microsoft-licensed codecs for Silverlight 3 and 4, the delivery of
the Moonlight 4 preview marks the first time the Moonlight project has shipped
a release consistent with many popular sites built for the latest release of
Silverlight.
Meanwhile, Microsoft is at work on Silverlight 5, the next
version of Silverlight that is expected to appear in beta some time during the
first half of 2011. Silverlight 5 introduces more than 40 new features,
including support for running Silverlight applications with desktop features in
the browser, video quality and performance improvements, and features that
improve developer productivity.
"We are always working to provide solutions that
software development teams need to be productive and deliver applications
quickly and cost-effectively," said Nikolay Atanasov, product manager for
RadControls for Silverlight at Telerik, in a statement. "With the
availability of the Moonlight 4 beta, and its compatibility with Telerik
RadControls for Silverlight, developers now have even greater flexibility to
rapidly develop applications for Silverlight, while being able to build and
deliver their applications on time and in budget."
Moreover, with the new preview, developers can also leverage
the Silverlight 3 APIs and numerous Silverlight 4 APIs, including support for
the H.264 video codec, hardware acceleration of graphics rendering using the
GPU, 3D transformation and pixel shaders. It also extends Web browser support
to Google Chrome and contains numerous performance and memory management
improvements. In addition, users can run Silverlight applications as desktop
applications on Linux in both "sand-boxed" and full-trust modes using
Moonlight's unique mopen command.
"The latest release of Moonlight is another important
step forward in creating a compatible open-source implementation of
Silverlight," said Brad Becker, director of product management at
Microsoft, in a statement. "By enabling support for Linux, Moonlight 4
gives Silverlight developers the tools they need to develop for the platforms
they want to."
To download the Moonlight 4 beta or learn more about the
project, visit http://go-mono.com/moonlight.
For more information about open-source projects that Novell sponsors and
contributes to, visit http://www.novell.com/linux/opensource.
Moonlight is part of a technical collaboration announced by Novell and Microsoft in
September of 2007. Microsoft has provided Novell with access to its test suites
and specifications for Silverlight, and provides Novell end users of Moonlight
with free access to the Microsoft Media Pack, a set of licensed media codecs
for video and audio.
The Mono Project is an open-source initiative sponsored by
Novell to develop a Unix version of the Microsoft .NET
development framework.
Darryl K. Taft covers the development tools and developer-related issues beat from his office in Baltimore. He has more than 10 years of experience in the business and is always looking for the next scoop. Taft is a member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and was named 'one of the most active middleware reporters in the world' by The Middleware Co. He also has his own card in the 'Who's Who in Enterprise Java' deck.
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