inside a browser or not. When running outside of a browser, HTML interop is disabled. In addition, access to the Function Keys is enabled. Locally installed Silverlight applications still run in a sandbox. Installed Silverlight 3 applications automatically check for updates asynchronously on every launch and updates are automatically installed. Running instances of the applications are informed when updates are available. Silverlight 3 is now listed as a requirement for eFiling income tax returns for free in the US. Silverlight 4 On November 18, 2009, at the Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles, Microsoft Corporation unveiled a Beta version of Silverlight 4. The final version was released on April 15, 2010 (along with Silverlight 4 tools for developers). New features in Silverlight 4 include: Support for Google's Chrome browser. Web cam and microphone support. Printing support. Improved mouse support including right button support and mouse wheel support. New notification support to display messages to end users. New and enhanced controls such as a RichTextBox and an enhanced DataGrid control. New support for implicit theming of controls. New hosted browser support for rendering HTML inside Silverlight. WCF data layer enhancements. Localization enhancements with bi-directional text. Support for Managed Extensibility Framework. Enhanced data binding support. Enhanced animation effects. Clipboard and drag and drop support. Deep Zoom performance enhancements. WCF rich web application services. Content protection for H.264 and support for playing offline DRM protected media. Additionally, the following features are provided to out-of-browser (locally installed) Silverlight applications that have been explicitly granted "trusted" status: Full keyboard access while running in full screen mode. Programmatic access to a user's local document folder. Support for local Component Object Model (COM) objects. Silverlight 5 On December 2, 2010 at the Silverlight Firestarter event, Silverlight 5 beta was announced for release in the 1st half of 2011. The final version was released on December 9, 2011. New features in Silverlight 5 include: Supports GPU accelerated video decoding Built-in 3D graphics support Variable speed playback of media content with automatic audio pitch correction Improved power awareness Built-in remote-control support Supports faster application startup Provides 64-bit browser support Automated UI testing support for applications with Visual Studio 2010 Delivers improved text clarity Developers can now debug data-binding expressions, set breakpoints on bindings. WCF RIA Services improvements include complex type support and better MVVM support. Release history References External links Microsoft Silverlight Release History Silverlight product page on Microsoft.com