Silverlight 2 Release Candidate 0 is now available

Microsoft has today released Silverlight 2 RC0 to developers for testing purposes and to help them prepare their existing Silverlight 2 Beta 2 applications for the final bits which is expected to roll out at the end of this year.

Here is what you will need to start building rich internet applications using Silverlight 2 Release Candidate 0: 

Expression Blend 2 SP1 RC Preview

This release of Blend is targeted towards development of Silverlight applications using the latest Release Candidate version. What this also means is that you will not need Blend 2.5 anymore as Blend 2 SP1 RC Preview is now ready to create new applications which target’s the latest RC0 version. You can download this version from here.

Microsoft Silverlight Tools for Visual Studio 2008 SP1

This latest update to Silverlight Tools for Visual Studio 2008 SP1 will install the necessary updates, Silverlight project templates, RC0 developer runtime, and SDK to enable support for building Silverlight applications using Visual Studio 2008 SP1. You can download it from here.

Silverlight 2 RC0 Developer Runtime (optional)

This runtime is already included in the Silverlight Tools for Visual Studio 2008 SP1 RC0. If you want only the runtime, or if you installed only Expression Blend which does not include this runtime, you may download it independently here.

Follow this link to learn more about what’s new to this release and how to migrate your existing Silverlight applications based on Beta 2 to the latest bits in Release Candidate 0.