Scott Guthrie has announced on his blog that Silverlight 1.0 has been released and that Novell will work with Microsoft to build a version of Silverlight that supports Linux. Vert good news for Silverlight.
Linux support is necessary--you can't leave out these devices when thinking about developing web content--even if they are the smaller part of the market. My crystal ball is watching the low-end of the notebook market and wondering if Linux might have a growth spurt, considering the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) XO, Intel's Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs), devices like ASUS's Eee, and so on. All of these devices might grow favor during the next phase of mobile adoption and if they do Silverlight needs to be there.
By the way, here's the official announcement about Silverlight 1.0 from Microsoft. As always, there's lots of talk about video, which is fine--Silverlight has some current leverage there--however, if Silverlight is going to become anything more than a Flash alternative, it's the rest of Silverlight that I'm most interested in. And there's plenty to watch for. I'm particularly interested in the next release of Silverlight---Silverlight 1.1. When it rolls out, it's going to be even easier to develop, richer, higher performance Silverlight experiences since it supports the .Net runtimes. Currently, developers have to use Javascript, which varies in performance from browser to browser and even when it's good it's not great.
Aside: Whew, the new inkable SearchTIP written in Silverlight that I just posted about works with the latest build--at least on Vista in IE. I'll do more testing in the morning. (I can't wait to try it out on Linux. That'll be a blast.)


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