Microsoft has launched Silverlight 3 and Expression 3. In conjunction with Microsoft Visual Studio, Silverlight and Expression offer a collaborative development and design environment that simplifies the process of delivering engaging user experiences.

"Silverlight and Expression fill a clear need in the marketplace for a complete end-to-end solution that makes it easy for development teams to work together effectively, from concept to deployment, to create the types of rich interactive experiences today's users expect," said Scott Guthrie, corporate vice president of the .NET Developer Platform at Microsoft. "In a record amount of time, we've gone from being the industry newcomer to achieving a remarkable rate of industry adoption, rapidly delivering capabilities such as SketchFlow and IIS Smooth Streaming that are unmatched by other vendors. With more than 6 million developers with .NET programming skills worldwide and a platform that delivers a rich user experience at some of the lowest costs possible, Silverlight ubiquity is a matter of 'when,' not 'if.'"

Microsoft is introducing several features in Silverlight 3 and Expression 3 that enable development teams to create RIAs and media applications with capabilities not offered by competitors, including the following:

• Expression SketchFlow provides development teams unrivaled capabilities to rapidly prototype applications and take their ideas from concept to reality.
• Out of Browser. Silverlight 3 provides the seamless ability to add out-of-browser, connected and disconnected scenarios for cross-platform applications, radically improving the productivity and capabilities over traditional RIAs.
• IIS Smooth Streaming. As part of Internet Information Services 7.0 (IIS7) Media Services and combined with Silverlight 3, IIS Smooth Streaming enables the industry's first HDTV-quality (1080p) video experiences with rich interactivity for both on-demand and live video.

Silverlight 3 also delivers hundreds of features and controls that increase development team productivity, including 3-D and hardware graphics acceleration. Combined with continued innovation in world-class tools for development teams in Expression 3, which builds on and complements the strengths of Visual Studio and works with Windows Server, the global Web community is now empowered to create cutting-edge RIAs and media experiences.

A full list of the new features and capabilities in Silverlight 3 and Expression 3 is available here.