Microsoft WCF RIA Services simplifies the traditional n-tier application pattern by bringing together the ASP.NET and Silverlight platforms. RIA Services provides a pattern to write application logic that runs on the mid-tier and controls access to data for queries, changes and custom operations. It also provides end-to-end support for common tasks such as data validation, authentication and roles by integrating with Silverlight components on the client and ASP.NET.

The Silverlight Toolkit is a collection of Silverlight controls, components and utilities made available outside the normal Silverlight release cycle. A product of the Microsoft Silverlight product team, the Silverlight Toolkit adds new functionality quickly for designers and developers, and provides the community an efficient way to help shape product development by contributing ideas and bug reports.

View some great examples of what you can accomplish with Silverlight.

Expression Studio Ultimate is a family of tools for professional designers building web and Windows client applications and rich media content.

Silverlight is a powerful development platform for creating engaging, interactive user experiences for Web, desktop, and mobile applications when online or offline.

Expression Web is a full-featured professional tool for designing, developing, and publishing compelling, feature-rich websites that conform to web standards.

The Silverlight Toolkit is a collection of Silverlight controls, components and utilities made available outside the normal Silverlight release cycle. A product of the Microsoft Silverlight product team, the Silverlight Toolkit adds new functionality quickly for designers and developers, and provides the community an efficient way to help shape product development by contributing ideas and bug reports.

Expression Studio 4 Web Professional includes a complete set of professional design and development tools for creating modern standards-based Web sites, streaming video, and Web graphics. It includes three professional applications that work together: Expression Web, Expression Encoder, and Expression Design.

Expression Studio Ultimate is a family of tools for professional designers building web and Windows client applications and rich media content.

Windows Web Application Gallery for Developers. Learn how the Microsoft Web App Gallery helps you share your web app with millions of Windows users, how the submission process works and what you'll need to join in.

The Eclipse Tools for Microsoft Silverlight Project will integrate advanced Silverlight development capabilities into the Eclipse IDE and Eclipse Rich Client Platform (RCP).

WebMatrix, the easiest way to build, test and deploy Web sites, installs in minutes and elegantly integrates a Web server, database and programming frameworks into a single integrated experience. Download Now!

Internet Explorer 9 is fast. Web sites and applications look and perform as if they were native to the PC. You'll notice a clean look and increased viewing area that makes Web sites shine.

Silverlight combines the best of web application development with the power of .NET. Silverlight applications that can be desktop applications, full-page in-browser RIAs, or components interacting with HTML and JavaScript on existing web pages. In this video, Pete Brown walks us through creating our first Silverlight web application.

The Silverlight 4 Training Course includes a whitepaper explaining all of the new Silverlight 4 RC features, several hands-on-labs that explain the features, and an eight-unit course for building business applications with Silverlight 4. Key aspects in this course are working with numerous sandboxed and elevated out of browser features, the new RichTextBox control, implicit styling, webcam, drag and drop, multi-touch, validation, authentication, MEF, WCF RIA Services, right mouse click, and much more!

You'll never meet someone more passionate about Web development. With a love for code, matched with great respect for user experience and design, Tim works daily with rich Internet application development. If you want to know what is happening with Silverlight and Web development, Tim's your man.

Microsoft® Silverlight is a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of .NET based media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web.

Get terrific insight into what's happening on the Silverlight platform and the Expression tools—straight from the source. Find out what's going on as it happens and share your thoughts with the team.

Visit this starting point for Silverlight development. Silverlight 4 adds a ton of new features, like webcam, microphone, and printing, to enable you to create incredible applications.

General discussion around Silverlight and issues around compatibility and potential bug reports.

The Microsoft UX Kit is targeted at technical and creative leads who want to better understand the tools, technologies, and scenarios that span Microsoft's User Experience ecosystem. Key topics range from "Building Immersive Multi-channel Solutions using Expression Studio" to "High fidelity and high Performing Desktop Touch Applications using Windows 7" to "Web Branding and Audience Targeting using SharePoint". The kit's contents can be browsed online and/or downloaded for offline use. It includes videos, presentations, sample code, and much more.

Tim Heuer outlines what has changed in the release candidate from the beta. All of the features still exist, but there are some changes to the implementations, as well as some new ones.

Make this your first stop with Silverlight 4 and read or download the 60+ page whitepaper! Walk through the new features in Silverlight 4, find learning materials and additional resources. This covers all of the new business centric features, features for rich media experiences, Expression Blend and Visual Studio tooling enhancements, and new Out of Browser features.

Microsoft Silverlight is a cross-browser, cross-platform implementation of the .NET Framework for building media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web.

Microsoft has unveiled a Beta version of Silverlight 4. This latest version delivers a full suite of powerful capabilities to business application developers, bringing the best-of-breed .NET platform to browser-based experiences. Note: this is a developer beta release only that does not have "go-live" licensing available or an end-user runtime.

This tutorial demonstrates how to include existing Silverlight content and streaming Silverlight content into a PHP web page.

Get in on all the excitement and see how Expression 3 and Silverlight 3 can help turn your vision, creativity, and energy into reality. Watch the launch keynote, check out the "Visual Kitchen" show for in-depth demos, and much more.

Check out what this small creative team at a digital design, development and strategy agency is doing with Microsoft Silverlight in a Mac environment. This blog is never boring, that's for sure.

On July 22nd, Microsoft® released the latest version of Expression® Studio, its collection of tools for graphics, UI and web designers. A key element in this suite is Expression Web 3, Microsoft's professional code editor for HTML and PHP developers. Various compelling new features in this release justified an update of a previous article on this topic. Learn more about what's new in Expression Web 3 today.

Learn what's new in the latest release of Silverlight, directly from the source. Then download Silverlight 3 and give it a try!

Download the Silverlight 3 runtime.

Add animation, navigation, and interactivity to your projects without writing code. Developers are able to encapsulate pieces of interactivity into reusable "Behaviors" that can then be utilized within Expression Blend. A Behavior is added to an element through drag and drop; any attributes exposed by the developer can then be edited directly in the Blend UI.

Although most Windows® Presentation Format (WPF) and Microsoft® Silverlight™ applications are designed to cover widely differing scenarios, there are cases where it is desirable to use both technologies to create complimentary programs. In such cases it is, of course, advantageous to coordinate the construction of both applications in order to achieve both efficient development and long term maintainability.

Microsoft® is taking interoperability seriously when it comes to Silverlight. Now, thanks to Microsoft and Soyatec, Eclipse developers will be able to create Microsoft Silverlight™ applications right in their favorite IDE.

If you're a Python or Ruby fan, you may feel you're missing out on all the latest developments in Rich Internet Applications. With support for Python and Ruby in Microsoft® Silverlight™ 2, dynamic language developers now have easy access to the latest RIA technologies.

This topic shows how to call JavaScript from managed code in a Web page that includes the Silverlight version 2 plug-in.

Historically, tracking how users interact with a RIA was almost never done. Adding the necessary analytic code to your RIA was usually an afterthought at best. But with Microsoft® Silverlight, designers and developers have an easier time of building tracking information in any time during development.

Some developers have decried the lack of controls for Microsoft® Silverlight™. Now with the Silverlight Toolkit, developers have a plethora of controls to choose from for their applications.

Rob Cherney writes about the IE8 Meta Tag to insure your web pages are compatible with the new browser: "...the IE 8 meta tag needs to be placed above any linked files. Enjoy the chance to not fix your site for now, that doesn't happen very often."

Efficient programming in Silverlight requires you to use the right tools. To get you up to speed on the latest Silverlight development tools, Cal Schrotenboer walks us through everything that comes with Silverlight Tools for Visual Studio.

Now that you have your great application built, you need to get it hosted, so what are your options?

Changing the designer-developer paradigm will only happen if there's something in it for both parties without the need to give up their favorite tools. We explore the state of designer-developer collaboration and what both sides need to do to advance the development process.

Some of the most important new features in Microsoft's recently released Expression Web 2 involve enhanced support for PHP. Don't think this is just a half hearted effort to appeal to the Open Source web development crowd. Expression Web 2 supports PHP developers with a carefully constructed, feature full treatment which you should seriously consider for your PHP applications.

Video has long been the bane of developers for lack of hosting and bandwidth. But with Microsoft® Silverlight™ Streaming, almost anyone can get their videos online quickly, easily and for free.

For a long time, collaboration between designers and developers has been a challenge. With developers not understanding much about graphical and user interface design and designers not knowing code requirements, there has always existed an unhealthy tension between the two. But now, thanks to Microsoft Silverlight, XAML, WPF and Expression Blend, the entire designer/developer dynamic is permanently changed for the better.

In its latest release alongside Silverlight 2 Beta 2, Deep Zoom Composer shifts to a more accessible XML format and offers better control of image quality. Those are just the latest improvements to a tool that's grown far more capable since its introduction back at MIX 08.

With Silverlight 2 now having a go-live license, you can begin to take advantage of all of its managed code features. In this application and walkthrough we show you how to utilize both a database and XML for your Silverlight 2 application.

Buttons and DataGrids get all the press, but Microsoft Silverlight 2 Beta 1 has more than new controls. Here are nine less-visible, "long-tail" technologies in the current beta, one of which may be the key to your next Silverlight application.

With the proliferation of Rich Interactive Application (RIA) platform choices out there, you no longer have to take a one-size-fits-all approach to developing your next RIA application. Knowing the strengths (and weaknesses) of each platform can help you to decide the best RIA for your next application.

You're not giving up Flash any time soon (and we don't blame you.) But if you could get your Flash application working in Silverlight, why wouldn't you? We show you the tools and techniques required to have your rockin' Flash application rolled for Silverlight.

Think PHP developers don't need Silverlight? Think again. By dynamically generating XAML (Extensible Application Markup Language), PHP developers can buff their skills with some very cool Microsoft® Silverlight™ tricks, adding a whole new responsive visual element to their PHP pages. This walkthrough goes through the details of building a simple Silverlight app just using XAML code, JavaScript, and PHP.

Get a hands-on introduction to the newest RIA technologies from Adobe, Microsoft, and Sun by building demo applications using AIR (Flex), Silverlight (CLR), and JavaFX.

Want to get started with Silverlight and don't have a clue as to where your services should go? Have no fear. In this feature we'll walk you through setting up an account on Windows Live and getting your services hosted there, both for development and deployment.