At MIX08, Microsoft Corp.'s Web designer and developer conference, Microsoft demonstrated the power of its platform to enable delivery of richer, more interactive customer experiences on the Web. Backed by major customers including AOL, Aston Martin, Cirque du Soleil, Hard Rock and NBCOlympics.com on MSN, Microsoft unveiled the next generation of its Web technologies with beta releases of Internet Explorer 8, Silverlight 2 and Expression Studio 2.

    Additional MIX08 news included a preview of Microsoft SQL Server Data Services, the announcement of a strategic relationship with Move Networks Inc., and DoubleClick Inc.'s preview of its Silverlight 2 software development kit for in-stream advertising. In Wednesday's MIX08 keynote address, Ray Ozzie, chief software architect, shared his vision for the role of the Web and the services opportunity across Microsoft businesses.

    "The Web is at the center of everything Microsoft is doing," Ozzie stated. "The investments we're making will enable developers and designers to deliver a range of seamless, connected experiences across the continuum of Web applications, rich clients, mobile and other devices."

    Dean Hachamovitch, general manager of the Internet Explorer team, demonstrated new features in Internet Explorer 8 for Web developers and end users, and Scott Guthrie, corporate vice president of the .NET Developer Division, highlighted advances in Silverlight, Expression Studio and Visual Studio that make it easier to deliver rich, connected experiences on the desktop, Web and beyond. MIX08 features a diverse set of customers and partners demonstrating rich Web applications that enable new business opportunities. With an average of 1.5 million daily downloads of the Silverlight plug-in, thousands of existing Silverlight applications and more than 85 members in the Silverlight Partner Initiative, Silverlight is attracting industry-leading content providers, content delivery networks, design agencies, ISVs and solution providers.

    DoubleClick demonstrated its Silverlight 2 SDK for in-stream advertising. Content publishers that deliver video content will be able to use this SDK within a Silverlight environment to target, serve, forecast and report on video-based advertising. Microsoft is also working with a broad set of customers and partners in the ad-serving, analytics, creative agency and content delivery network sectors.  

Microsoft introduced advancements to the following tools and technologies:
    -  First public beta of Internet Explorer 8. Internet Explorer 8 is the next version of Microsoft's popular browser, and in beta 1 it delivers significantly improved standards support and developer platform investments with enhanced user experiences. Internet Explorer 8 beta 1 delivers increased interoperability, offers developers better predictability when designing sites, and will feature full support for cascading style sheet 2.1 at release to manufacturing. Internet Explorer 8 beta 1 includes integrated developer tools to quickly debug HTML, CSS and scripts in a visual environment.
    -  Silverlight 2 beta available for download; support for mobile devices. Microsoft Silverlight answers customer desire for rich, cross-platform media and "zero-click" applications that match the rich interactive application experience while bringing the robustness and power of Microsoft .NET to the browser. Silverlight 2 beta includes innovative new features like Deep Zoom, more than 40 new controls and a rich .NET base class library of functionality.
    -  Expression Studio 2 beta. Today Microsoft released a beta of Expression Studio 2, designed to work seamlessly with Visual Studio, enabling designers and developers to collaborate on the creation of better user experiences. Key new features of Expression Studio 2 include PHP support in Expression Web and support for Silverlight in Expression Web, Expression Blend, Expression Media Encoder and Expression Design. To enable designers to start immediately exploring the power of Silverlight 2, Microsoft also announced the availability of Expression Blend 2.5 March 2008 Preview.