Silverlight 3 and 4 to "open up new areas"

Microsoft will reveal more details on Silverlight 3 at its forthcoming Mix 09 conference in Las Vegas, Nevada. The company has promised deep dives at the March show into controls, rendering, and latest media features, and promised to discuss what's new in its third installment.

The next two releases of Silverlight will take Microsoft's media player in completely new directions, the technical executive in charge has promised.

Silverlight 3 will see a number of features designed to improve graphics. These include H.264 - a video-compression codec built for most applications and different bitrates - 3D graphics, acceleration of the underlying hardware, and rich-data binding in Visual Studio and Visual Web Developer Express.

There will also be work on some issues such as forms over data applications. The company hasn't said when it plans to release Silverlight 3, but it is expected to be this year. The line up of Mix sessions and recent history strongly suggest a beta at the show. Microsoft announced Silverlight and then released the Silverlight 2 beta at previous Mix shows.

Separately, Microsoft's rich-internet application (RIA) and interface rival Adobe Systems said its AIR had passed 100 million downloads - the company's target for 2008 - 10 months after release.

Adobe said Flash Player 10, used in AIR, had been installed on more than 55 per cent of computers and that it expects downloads will surpass 80 per cent by the second quarter of 2009.