Bill Reiss has released SilverSprite which allows you to port XNA games without code changes to Silverlight 3. Sounds great and it seems to be getting some attention in the silverlight community. Below is a video and some links to XNA games that have been ported to Silverlight. Some are very slick!

Watch the Channel 9 video on SilverSprite here: http://channel9.msdn.com/shows/Continuum/SilverSprite/

 See SilverSprite in action:

• Farseer Physics XNA demos: http://www.bluerosegames.com/silverspritefarseerdemo
• Xbox 360 version of Dr. Popper in the browser: http://www.bluerosegames.com/drpoppersilverxna.web/
• Platformer: http://silverlight.laumania.net/platformer/ - Source

SilverSprite is brought to you by Silver Arcade http://www.silverarcade.com, an ad based game site for Silverlight games which Bill runs. Its an ideal start to get the large amount of 'Xbox Live Community Games' accessible in Silverlight. Why 3D isn't quite there in Silverlight 3 I am sure it will come in future updates.

For more information on SilverSprite click here. Why not discuss using SilverSprite or XNA/Silverlight games development at Silverlight Forums.

Today Silverlight 3 shipped and a site (www.seethelight.com) was built to count down to the official launch which is at 15:00 GTM. This Virtual Event was created using Silverlight and is intended to be a virtual event where users can watch seminars and tutorials on Silverlight 3 and Expression 3.

While loading the experience you are shown the following preloader 

Upon loading the site you enter the main lobby

Here is the keynote where you can watch Silverlight 3 being shown off!

This is one of the agency stands which is loaded once you select it from one of the halls. The halls allow you to rotate the stands from left to right.

Overall this is a massive site and just goes to show just how far Silverlight can be pushed. If you're new to Silverlight then starting here is a good idea. It has links to all the handy blogs and has documentation for you to read. 

So go take a look at the site - www.seethelight.com 

As mentioned on my previous post 'Microsoft Silverlight 3 and Expression Blend 3 launching July 10' Silverlight 3 has been released and is available to download at Silverlight.net (links below).

• Microsoft Silverlight 3 Tools for Visual Studio 2008 SP1
• Microsoft Expression Blend 3 + SketchFlow RC
• Deep Zoom Composer
• Silverlight 3 Toolkit July 2009 Installer

There are loads of new features ranging from 3D to taking your application offline and a complete list can be found here. I would like to highlight 2 features that I have already used:

• Mouse Wheel - No more Javascript workarounds! Supported by Silverlight 3.
• Deep Linking - Link to any 'page' within your Silverlight application.

I'm hoping that this version of Silverlight will really gather some interest within the Flash community and hopefully lead to some new sites being launched using Silverlight instead of Flash.

Microsoft has created a wave of 'Zoom-In' galleries using Silverlight and Deep Zoom. These has been around for a little while but lately I have seen more and more popping up all over the place. Anyway here is a glance at Pretty in Ink.

The interface loading:

Selecting filters:

Zooming in on a star:

Overall its a nice way to view images and its also good to push Silverlight to users that might not already have the plugin installed but its just another DeepZoom gallery - I would prefer them to recreate Wonderwall in Silverlight. Fingers crossed its on their list. Other 'Zoom-In' galleries are:

• Rings and Bling
• Red Carpet
• Hair & Makeup Shockers

I posted about Silverlight 2 and Xap optimization and with the announcement of Silverlight 3 hitting the web in just over a month I thought I would show you a useful post on Jeff Prosise's blog on Silverlight 3 assembly caching. You can find his post here and I highly recommend you read it as it will reduce the Xap download time and improve the user experience dramatically. Best of all it is really easy 

Packed with new controls, features and functionality Silverlight 3 is starting to really give developers and designers a headache - Flash or Silverlight. For certain solutions Silverlight has taken over 

• DockPanel
• DataGrid
• WrapPanel
• Label
• ViewBox
• AutoCompleteBox
• TreeView
• Expander
• HeaderedItemsControl
• HeaderedContentControl

Screenclick is Ireland's largest online movie rental company and have included a Silverlight Call To Action (CTA) banner within their homepage. Now this is good as hopefully Screenclick will see Silverlight's advantages with media and might peruse the route of creating a Silverlight player but that is all if's and buts! The Silverlight CTA on screenclick's homepage isn't the best example I have seen and feels like it needs some designers magic to just give it that slickness. Take a look below and check it out yourself:

A while ago I posted about Bill Reiss over at Blue Rose Games who was planning on creating a Silverlight gaming website where developers who submitted games that were approved got a slice of any profits made from the advertising. I dropped Bill a tweet the other day, and I am delighted to see that the site SilverArcade.com has launched!

At present there are 12 games listed to play which I am sure will go over the next few weeks, and I must say the games that are available are of a higher quality than most examples you find elsewhere. The site interface is very clean and the adverts don't intrude into the gaming space which often happens on other gaming websites. I like that Bill is also is creating a gaming community where people can register/login and rate games and each user has a profile. Bill has already received some praise from the guys at Microsoft including Tim Heuer.

If you have a game that you would like to submit then check out the details here: http://www.silverarcade.com/Home/Help 

Gavin over at Silverlightbuzz.com has been working on a Silverlight game for the last few weeks and he finally put up a version to play on his blog. I have been watching him create bits of it during the day and have helped him out with the odd bit of code and I must say the game is looking good. It needs some expansion and some more TLC but I'm sure he will address that in the coming weeks.

Why not have a play and leave some feedback on your thoughts.

One of the first things I noticed once I installed Silverlight 3 is that you have a new project type in Visual Studio 2008 for 'Silverlight Navigation Application' which has been added to make it easier for people to start building RIA's in Silverlight. Now having a quick google on the project type I have found a few sites that have started creating and distributing Xaml templates that allow you to 'skin' or 'theme' a basic site very easily. Think a theme for BlogEngine or Wordpress. Now this got me thinking maybe I should look to create a section that Xaml themes can be added. Any thoughts?

The Visual Studio Template has this theme within: