Silverlight 5 beta coming next week at MIX11

The Silverlight Team announced on Tuesday that the next major version of Silverlight will be debuting at MIX11 next week.

In the blog post, Microsoft emphasized their support for HTML5 and Internet Explorer 9 becoming the next major transition in web technologies. As web and application developers now have more choices than before, Microsoft needs to expand its focus on multiple support platforms, including keeping the Silverlight dream alive.

As part of Microsoft's continued efforts to improve cross-browser support and plug-in capabilities, Microsoft will be releasing a Silverlight 5 beta at MIX11 next week.

As part of the continued support for scenarios that require plug-in based capabilities, we will ship a beta of Silverlight 5 at MIX, with some great demos for compelling scenarios.

The next version of Silverlight will come with a lot of new features and media support improvements, including rich UI capabilities, hardware decode and presentation of H.264, HD rendering using GPU support, remote control support for users using peripherals and many more. A full list of features can be found on the Silverlight Future website. Back in November, rumors of Silverlight support for Xbox 360 started to surface on websites, which is now becoming more of a reality than a dream.