Discussion: Silverlight 4 expectations

Question

SL 3 is almost here (the official release date is the 10th of July), and most of its new features are already known (mainly UI improvements and wider support in other media formats). I think it's time open a discussion about what are the expecations from SL4.

So, what features do you wish will be available in Silverlight 4?

My (subjective) list:

1. Offer an option to run SL apps with elevated privileges (authorized by client, of course)
2. Printing
3. More mouse events (Scrolling)

Answer 1

• Better shader support
• Better mouse support

Answer 2

Better Audio support. I believe flash is a bit (or a lot) ahead in this regards. More support geared towards game developers.

WPF 3d Support?

Answer 3

Support for commanding

More 3D

VisualBrush support

Menu/MenuItem controls

Answer 4

Data Triggers

Answer 5

More users?

Answer 6

My list:

1. Even better data binding. Some WPF scenarios still don't work properly. Many properties that should be are not bindable.
2. ICommand implementation. The proliferation of these at the moment is confusing to many, many intermediate developers that hesitate to do this themselves.
3. Support for some .NET 4.0/C# 4.0 features, namely named and optional parameters and the keyword 'dynamic'.
4. More ways to use hardware acceleration. Hardware accelerated shaders. I don't think full blown 3D would be necessary. The current 'fake' one should work just fine for many scenarios.
5. .NET RIA services 'built-in', better support for 'business' apps.
6. Nicer story about authentication, especially in the Web services area.
7. Theming and a couple of new controls/panels. I find the current list of available UI elements and panels quite satisfactory.
8. MUCH improved code/markup sharing with WPF. This is my biggest want/need. Ideally, SL should converge toward being TRUE subset of WPF.

Answer 7

1. Printing support
2. Mic / Speaker / Webcam support (VoIP / Communication Scenarios)
3. The ability to host HTML content ( so printing gets easier)
4. SQL Server Compact Edition for Silverlight (isolated storage)

Answer 8

• MultiBinding

Although there is this great workaround by Colin Eberhardt, the normal WPF "IMultiValueConverter" would be really great to have in SL.

{EDIT}

Another ones:

• Support for starting applications on startup.
• Tray notification and tray icon support.
• Better TextBlock handling (trimming,...).
• Little bit of support over the task bar icon (blinking notification or something)

{ENDEDIT}

{EDIT2}

• Automatic Update of Icons if the OOB Application is updated. In SL3, the ICO- file for the desktop-shortcut is made with the icon.png's of the installed (not updated) application.

{ENDEDIT2}

Answer 9

For Visual Studio:

Better debugging, especially of data binding. No more "AE_G_PARSE_ERROR" or "Error at line (0,0)".

Answer 10

For me- Right To Left.