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Infragistics Working on Silverlight and ASP.NET Controls
Infragistics is developing tools for Microsoft's Silverlight cross-platform browser plug-in, as well as a new set of server controls.
by Chris Kanaracus

June 5, 2007

Presentation component vendor Infragistics on Monday announced it is developing tools for Microsoft's Silverlight cross-platform browser plug-in, as well as a new set of server controls that will work on both ASP.NET 2.0 and the upcoming ASP.NET 3.5.

Infragistics made the announcement at Microsoft's Tech●Ed conference in Orlando, Fla., where Product Manager Devin Rader demoed the new technologies.

Among the Silverlight controls Rader displayed was a charting component based on a control Infragistics is developing for Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). Infragistics is calling its upcoming ASP.NET product suite "Project Aikido." It is being developed using ASP.NET AJAX extensions 1.0 and ASP.NET 3.5; they are set to be "lighter, faster" tools, the company says.

Rader notes the overall advancement of UI technologies in the past five years. "Developers' expectations have changed in that time period," he says.

Rader is bullish on Silverlight's potential, saying it appeals to a broad range of developer skill sets. "It doesn't matter whether you're a Web developer or a WPF developer. It's really in the middle," explains Rader, who says that Silverlight's cross-platform nature "really opens up the market for us."

To date, Microsoft has announced support for Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari and the Opera browser, though not for apps running on Linux.

Silverlight is still fairly nascent. Microsoft released a 1.1 alpha version of the plug-in at the MIX07 conference in May. The company has not yet announced a go-live date. Still, this hasn't stopped component vendors like Infragistics and Bulgaria-based Telerik from working on associated tooling.

Also Monday, Infragistics said its NetAdvantage for Windows Presentation Foundation control set is now fully compatible with the recently released Beta 1 of Visual Studio 2008.

About the Author
Chris Kanaracus is the news editor for Redmond Developer News. You can contact at ckanaracus@reddevnews.com.