Silverlight v2.0 (previously known as Silverlight v1.1) public release will have the following new features.

• Rich Controls: The next Silverlight release will add support for core form controls (textbox, checkbox, radiobutton, etc), built-in layout management controls (StackPanel, Grid, etc), common functionality controls (TabControl, Slider, ScrollViewer, ProgressBar, etc) and data manipulation controls (DataGrid, etc).

• WPF UI Framework: The next public Silverlight will add support for the higher level features of the WPF UI framework. These include: the extensible control framework model, layout manager support, two-way data-binding support, and control template and skinning support. The WPF UI Framework features in Silverlight will be a compatible subset of the WPF UI Framework features in .NET Framework 3.5 release.

• Rich Networking Support: Silverlight release will add support for REST, POX, RSS, and WS* communication. It will also add support for cross domain network access.

• Rich Base Class Library Support: Silverlight will include a rich .NET base class library of functionality (collections, IO, generics, threading, globalization, XML, local storage, etc). Silverlight release will also add built-in support for LINQ to XML and richer HTML DOM API integration.

Let us hope Microsoft will release the beta in 2008 Q1.