MIX09 Big Announcements!

I just got back from the MIX09 event that happened at Las Vegas earlier this week and here are some of things that was announced at Mix09:

Announcing the Microsoft Web Platform: Web Platform Installer 2.0 Beta and Windows Web Application Gallery!

The Microsoft Web Platform has a goal to deliver the best platform to developers for building their Web applications. Microsoft is delivering the platform, tools, and applications that development organizations, communities, and developers need.  The Microsoft Web Platform offers a complete ecosystem for building and hosting web sites, services, and applications.  It is designed to interoperate with both ASP.NET and PHP, and integrate easily with community applications and products in the market today.

The Microsoft Web Platform Installer 2.0 (Web PI) is a free tool that makes it simple to download, install and keep up-to-date with the latest components of the Microsoft Web Platform, including Internet Information Services (IIS), SQL Server Express, .NET Framework and Visual Web Developer.  In addition, install popular open source ASP.NET and PHP web apps with the Web PI.

Windows Web App Gallery is a community hub of free and popular .NET and PHP applications for you to use as building blocks for creating dynamic web solutions.

Silverlight 3 Beta (Developer release).   This is a very exciting release.  Some of the interesting new features that the platform provides include:

• Support for Higher Quality Video & Audio. With support for native H.264/Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) Audio, live and on-demand IIS7 Smooth Streaming, full HD (720p+) playback, and an extensible decoder pipeline, Silverlight 3 brings rich, full-screen, stutter-free media experiences to the desktop.
• Silverlight 3 contains new 3D graphics, animation features, hardware accelerated effects and text improvements that enable designers and developers to create next generation Web visuals.
• Improved RIA Productivity. New features include:
  • Silverlight 3 is packed with over 60 high-quality, fully skinnable and customizable out-of-the-box controls
  • Deep Linking. Silverlight 3 includes support for deep linking, which enables bookmarking a page within a RIA.
  • Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
  • Enhanced Data Support: Element to Element binding, Data Forms, New features for data validation, Support for business objects
  • Improved performance through Application library caching, Enhanced Deep Zoom, Binary XML, Local Connection.
• Out of Browser Capabilities. The new out of browser experience in Silverlight 3 enables users to place their favorite Silverlight applications directly onto their PC and Mac, with links on the desktop and start menu—all without the need to download an additional runtime or browser plug-in. Also, the new offline features enables Silverlight applications to work whether the computer is connected to the Internet or not.

· Also the other major announcement at MIX was the launch of Internet Explorer (IE8). This latest version is faster than IE7 by 80% in common micro-benchmarks. In side-by-side measures of speed in opening the top 25 websites worldwide, IE8 was as fast or faster than Firefox and Chrome.

· Some of the major features of IE8 are its better tab handling, a niftier search bar, a more useful address bar, and new tools that deliver information directly from other Web pages and services. Some of the security features include the anti-malware protection, and better ways to protect your privacy and most noticeable new features are Accelerators and Web Slices.

· Additional information on the release is available at Internet Explorer 8. In addition some of the IE8 Add-ons from some of our partners is available at here. You also can see some of my previous posts on IE8 here