We are excited to announce the availability of ComponentArt Web.UI for Silverlight Beta - our latest suite of controls for Rich Internet Application development. The initial release will feature eight controls, with rapid expansion of the suite planned throughout 2009. Links to live demos, beta download package, as well as detailed roadmap information are all available on our Silverlight Controls page.

Admittedly, we are a little late to the Silverlight party. Other leading vendors have been offering Silverlight products for a few months now. On top of that, there is Microsoft's own excellent Silverlight Control Toolkit, containing a large number of controls.

However, what's missing from the marketplace at this time, in my opinion, are real "industrial strength" line of business controls. Rather than trying to quickly ship a large number of controls, we decided to take our time to  make these core controls (Menu, TreeView, Grid, ToolBar, etc.)  as solid as possible. There are many features that we still want to add, so this release is only the first step on that journey. I hope you will find that our effort was worthwhile and that we managed to deliver best-of-breed core UI functionality.

Silverlight is truly a wonderful presentation layer platform. Products currently offered in the marketplace merely scratch the surface of what can be done with it (that includes our own offering). There is so much "raw power" in Silverlight and we are really excited about the opportunity to add value to it.

As always, your feedback is welcome and highly appreciated. Please let us know what you think about the current features as well as the announced roadmap. A flurry of blog posts by our Silverlight team is forthcoming, I'm sure, so don't hesitate to tell us what you'd like us to write about.