Veteran Microsoft ISV partner Infragistics is taking an early lead on Silverlight 2, Microsoft"s emerging cross-browser media plug-in. The company expects to release an experimental set of components based on Silverlight 2 beta 2 for building the interfaces on rich internet applications at the same time Microsoft launches the second Silverlight 2 beta - expected Friday. The beta was promised by Microsoft chairman Bill Gates at TechEd Tuesday.
Microsoft has been pushing Silverlight pretty hard, as it tries to break into the market of media content creation. Eighteen-year-old Infragistics, meanwhile, has a history of being an early adopter around Windows. The company, which specializes in re-usable software components for building application presentation layers, was quick to pick up .NET - Microsoft"s big platform shift in the early 2000s. Explaining the enthusiasm for something so new even the latest pre-release code hasn"t even shipped, Windows group lead technical evangelist Anthony Lombardo told The Register Silverlight would let developers break through barriers posed by AJAX and javascript.