Silverlight 4 Available Now

Ensure that you have the latest Visual Studio 2010 or Visual Web Developer Express 2010 installed as it is a prerequisite for developing Silverlight 4 applications using Visual Studio. Below are the additional tools you’ll want to get started:

• Silverlight 4 Tools for Visual Studio 2010
  This will install the developer runtime of Silverlight 4, the Visual Studio project support and the Silverlight 4 SDK. If you are developing Silverlight 4 applications, this will be the minimum you want to install!
• Windows Runtime or Mac Runtime
  If you installed the tools above, you will get the developer runtime and there is no need to install again. These downloads are being made available for test machines for the Windows and Mac platforms for your applications.
• Expression Blend 4 Beta
  This is a beta version of Expression Blend that will enable authoring of Silverlight 4 applications.
• Silverlight Toolkit
  The toolkit has been updated to provide support for Visual Studio 2010 and Silverlight 4 development. The Toolkit provides numerous controls for your application and source code is also included for these controls using an Open Source license.
• WCF RIA Services
  Microsoft WCF RIA Services simplifies the traditional n-tier application pattern by bringing together the ASP.NET and Silverlight platforms. The 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 on the mid-tier.
• Online Silverlight 4 Documentation
• Offline CHM help Silverlight 4Documentation file download

Once you have the tools you need to get started, view more information below to walk you through some of the new features in detail and download some sample code.