I have recently been playing with Microsoft's new Silverlight technology, both version 1.0 and 1.1 This time it is a bit of a personal project, I'll keep you posted if it amounts to anything more than a bit of fun.

Silverlight, especially 1.1 with CLR support, is an amazing little piece of software, I have worked with Flash/Flex before and always been left wanting, perhaps it was simply the language barrier, or just how things are done in Adobe's world more generally. Getting that sort of functionality, wrapped up in the MS way of doing things is simply fantastic. MS seem very dedicated to this technology, they are going to build support for Apple and Linux OS's; Firefox, Safari and Opera browsers, it is all very un-Microsoft, and I love it. My dev system at the moment consists of the VS 2008 beta 2 and Expression Blend August Preview running on XP. I had some trouble running Silverlight 1.1 on my Vista machine, but didn't look into it too far.

So what do you need to know? First, if you are into the web, it is well worth checking this stuff out, just for fun if nothing else. Second, stick with version 1.1, using C# to write up your behaviour rather than Javascript is well worth it. By the time 1.1 ships 1.0 will be a distant memory.

I will look to post some more about Silverlight over time, I am very keen on digging into the XMLHTTP POST side of things to create Client/Server style functionality. Hopefully I will find some scope for a few technical discussion in there.