Mix 09 really turned out to be quite an event, a lot of cool new stuff was announced.

ASP.NET MVC 1.0

The first thing I saw was ASP.NET MVC 1.0. I have been waiting for this for a while now since I want to do a MVC site for some stuff at work and don’t want to deal with CTP or RC releases. Now that it is finalized I finally can start working on that. You can download ASP.NET MVC 1.0 here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=53289097-73ce-43bf-b6a6-35e00103cb4b&displaylang=en

Silverlight 3

The biggest announcement I would say about Silverlight 3 is that you can go Out-of-Browser. This is of course a direct attack on Adobe AIR which has a ton of desktop clients. Check out the following post to see how simple this is: Enabling Out-of-Browser Support in Silverlight 3

Here is a screen shot

Here is what Microsoft says about Silverlight 3 Out Of Browser

The new out-of-browser experience in Silverlight 3 Beta enables users to place their favorite Silverlight applications directly onto any PC or Mac desktop, start menu or application folder, without the need to download an additional runtime or browser plug-in. Further, the new experience enables Silverlight applications to work whether the computer is connected to the Internet or not – a radical improvement to the traditional Web experience.

Silverlight 3 Bitmap API and Shader Effects

With Silverlight 3 Beta, users can now write pixels to a bitmap. Thus, they can build a photo editor to do red-eye correction, perform edits on scanned documents or create specials effects for cached bitmaps from elements on the screen. Shader effects include blur and drop shadow.

Download Silverlight 3 Beta here: http://silverlight.net/getstarted/silverlight3/default.aspx

Silverlight 3 Beta Fact Sheet: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/events/mix/docs/Silverlight3FS.doc

Expression Blend 3

Expression Blend 3 has a ton of cool stuff, here is a little description of some of these features

Expression Blend 3 SketchFlow Feature

The SketchFlow feature in Expression Blend 3 allows designers to demonstrate concepts effectively by enabling them to follow multiple paths through a concept, test different scenarios and provide comments in context by annotating their experience.

Expression Blend 3 Photoshop Import Feature

Expression Blend 3 delivers a Photoshop import feature, which enables designers to generate design time sample data within Expression Blend or import it from an XML file, making it easy to build data-connected applications without access to live data. Users can easily switch between using sample data and using live data at run-time.

Download Expression Blend 3 Preview here: http://expression.microsoft.com/en-us/dd565875.aspx

Internet Explorer 8

Internet Explorer 8 can be downloaded in 25 languages at http://www.microsoft.com/ie8 starting at noon EDT on March 19. There is a ton of new stuff in IE8, I have been using the RC versions for a while now and I must say that I really like it. It is definitely much faster than IE7 and IE6

Internet Explorer 8 Accelerator

Accelerators make it faster and easier to perform common tasks online by making Web-based services such as ESPN.com, Live Search and Sina available for use directly from the page people are viewing. Users can simply right-click a word or phrase and instantly map, e-mail, or share it.

Web Slices

Web Slices in Internet Explorer 8 makes favorite information from sites such as Digg, Yahoo! Mail, OneRiot, and eBay instantly available wherever someone goes on the Web.

Domain Highlighting and Tab Coloring

Domain Highlighting is a nice feature because you can tell right away if you are on a fake site or on the real ebay site since that will be highlighted

So that is it for day one, I will update this post after day 2 starts