Hands on: Moonlight 2 brings Silverlight 2, bits of 3, to Linux

"Novell announced this week the official release of Moonlight 2, a new version of the company's open source implementation of Microsoft's Silverlight rich Internet application framework. Moonlight 2 is compatible with content that is designed for Silverlight 2, but it also includes support for a number of features from Silverlight 3.

"Launched in 2007 by Novell's Mono team, the Moonlight project is developing a Firefox plugin for Linux that can render Silverlight media. Microsoft has endorsed the effort and supports it by supplying licensed codecs and test cases to help ensure that Moonlight properly conforms with the Silverlight specifications. The plugin is distributed as open source, except for the proprietary codecs which are obtained automatically by the plugin.

"Moonlight 1.0, which was released earlier this year, delivered compatibility with Silverlight 1.0. The new release—which has been under development for roughly ten months—introduces a number of very significant features, including support for managed code and the Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR). The DLR, which Microsoft released under an open source license in 2007, makes it possible to use .NET variants of Python and Ruby in Silverlight and Moonlight."

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