Silverlight 4 minor update–June 2010

Today we released a service update for Silverlight 4.  This is a minor release that addresses some items found immediately after release that have now completed our test passes with those who reported them.  Most of the items found won’t affect all users, but media developers will want to get this update for their applications and encourage their users to upgrade.

This update (4.0.50524.0) addresses a few media-related items found by some of our media customers.  A few items were serviced for DRM users as well as 2nd monitor usage for media on the Mac platform.  If you are developing media solutions (or are a media application user), you’ll want to upgrade to this release and encourage your users to as well.  You can read more about the key specific issues in KB982926.

For Developers

If you are a developer and want to get the update, all you need is to update the developer runtime.  There is no tooling or SDK update for this release.  You can download the updated developer runtime here: Windows developer runtime or Mac developer runtime.  Once installed, your new Silverlight 4 applications will target this platform version.  No other changes to your tools are required.  On existing applications if you want your users to ensure they have this latest version, please ensure you update your <object> tag to increment the minRuntimeVersion attribute to the appropriate version (4.0.50524.0).

What about <fill-in-the-feature-issue-you-found>?  Why isn’t that in this update?!

Some may wonder how fixes get determined to be in which releases.  You may be asking hey I reported XYZ right after release and why isn’t it in this update!?  Our team, like other large teams, operates on a schedule of planned (and sometimes unplanned) releases. 

We have general timeframes for service releases in the event we need them.  Sometimes those planned cycles aren’t needed and the planned release is skipped.  This helps better plan actual resources, etc.  When an issue is identified from any type of customer, it is evaluated by the ‘triad’ for that release (a triad represents leads for program management, dev, and test).  Things like security issues are given obvious priority versus things that aren’t regressions or are new features.

Once that list of work items is determined (based on criteria set by the triad) the work begins.  This includes development, testing, compliance, security passes, etc.  Each time a change to the plan occurs, this process gets reset.  So once a set of work items is approved and determined to be the release it usually doesn’t change unless something significant.  Of course there are many other factors that are involved here and I’m generalizing.

Back to your question of where are my reported changes?  If they aren’t in this release, they are still being evaluated for the next cycle (or perhaps already being worked on and solved).  Once I have more information on future releases I’m happy to share them.

Hope this helps!