Improved media support
- Low Latency Audio Playback: Use the SoundEffect API to trigger low-latency sound
- Variable Speed Playback: allows video to be played at different speeds and supports fast-forward and rewind. At up to twice the speed, audio pitch correction allows users to watch videos while preserving a normal audio pitch.
- H/W Decode of H.264 media: Significant performance improvements with H.264 media decoding of unprotected content
- DRM Key Rotation/LiveTV Playback: Long-running live TV playback is protected through the use of rotating licenses
- Application-Restricted Media: Prevents playback of protected content in unauthorized applications
Improved Text support
- Text Tracking & Leading: Exercise fine-grained control over the spacing between characters and lines in your text
- Linked Text Containers: Create linked RichTextBlocks that allow text to flow seamlessly from one to the next
- OpenType and Pixel Snapped Text : Improved text clarity
- Postscript vector printing: reduces the size of print jobs and improves rendering quality of text
- Performance improvements for Block Layout Engine.
Building next-generation business applications
- PivotViewer -- now included in SDK. Adds support for dynamic client-based collections, XAML-based visuals, and customizability.
- ClickCount: Add support for multi-click to your application
- Listbox/ComboBox type-ahead text searching: Listboxes and ComboBoxes can now scroll based on text input
- Ancestor RelativeSource Binding: Bind to a property on a parent control
- Implicit DataTemplates: Allow DataTemplates to be defined implicitly
- DataContextChanged event
- Added PropertyChanged to the UpdateSourceTrigger enum
- Save File and Open File Dialog: Specify a default filename when you launch your SaveFileDialog and specify a default directory when you launch your OpenFileDialog
- Databinding Debugging: Set a breakpoint directly in XAML, examine locals, and debug your bindings
- Custom Markup Extensions: Execute custom code at XAML parse time
- Binding on Style Setters: You can now specify a binding within a style
Silverlight 5 performance improvements
- Parser Performance Improvements: Improved XAML parse times for UserControls & ResourceDictionaries
- Network Latency Improvements: Significant performance improvement in ClientHttpWebRequest scenarios
- H/W accelerated rendering in IE9 windowless mode: Silverlight now uses the new SurfacePresenter APIs for H/W accelerated rendering in IE9 windowless mode
- Multicore JIT: Shortens the start-up time for Silverlight apps
- 64-bit browser support
Graphics improvements
- Improved Graphics stack: The graphics stack has been re-architected to add features such as Independent Animations
- 3D: Use the XNA API on the Windows platform to gain low-level access to the GPU and draw vertex shaders and low-level 3D primitives. Includes Render targets, XNA built-in effects, surface composition settings for depth/stencil buffers and multi-sample anti-aliasing
Silverlight 5 extends features of the "Trusted Application" model
Silverlight 5 extends features of the 'Trusted Application' model to the browser for the first time. These features, when enabled via a group policy registry key and an application certificate, users won't need to leave the browser to perform complex tasks:
- Multiple window support: Launch multiple top-level windows inside a SL OOB application
- Full-Trust in-browser: Using Group Policy, deploy signed in-browser applications that harness the full power of full-trust functionality
- In-browser HTML support: Host your WebOC within an in-browser SL application
- Unrestricted File System Access: Read from and write to any directory on your system, from a full-trust application
- P/Invoke support : Allows existing native code to be run directly from Silverlight
Tools improvements
- Visual Studio Team Test support.