Silverlight 4 service release

Microsoft released a service release of Silverlight 4 last week.  The update build is 4.0.50826.0 and you can find all the details about it at http://jpda.me/dzXlXu KB2164913.

The primary changes are;

• SDK feature to enable Add New Row capabilities in DataGrid control
• Improving startup performance of Silverlight applications
• Adding mouse wheel support for out-of-browser applications on the Mac platform
• Various media-related fixes around DRM content
• Fixed memory leak when MouseCapture is used
• Fixed memory leak for DataTemplate usage

For end users

For end users, having them simply install the runtime will provide them with the updated bits and benefits of the fixes/features in this service release.  The best way to force encourage your users to upgrade to this service release would be to leverage the MinRuntimeVersion attribute of your object tag:

Notice lines 5 and 6 above.  This would trigger that the end user is required for your application to run and require them to upgrade. The minRuntimeVersion/autoUpgrade are the minimum to require your user to upgrade to the later version.  Ideally you would follow good installation experience guidance (see “Installation Experience Whitepaper” with complete sample source code) to customize your install and/or upgrade experience.

For Developers

If you are a developer and authoring Silverlight applications you may want to grab the new developer bits and updated SDK:

• Windows developer runtime



• Mac developer runtime



• Silverlight 4.0.50826.0 SDK

I would install the developer build first and then the SDK and you’ll have a refreshed environment. 

Note that when you now create a new project you’ll be using the new SDK and so the minRuntimeVersion (see above) of the project templates as well as compiled bits for your SL4 application will be using/requiring the updated runtime.

There are NO Visual Studio tools updates for this release so the Silverlight4_Tools.exe package is not needed to re-install.

Reference

Tim Heuer’s blog Method ~ of ~ failed, http://jpda.me/bCu6Zv