Silverlight beta 4 supports Webcams

Microsoft yesterday released an early beta version of Silverlight 4 software, which for the first time brings support for the webcams, with the possibility of recording video / audio content.

Mentioned functionality will enable the creation of applications for video conferencing, and recording audio / video content from a Web camera, which brings great opportunities for developers. Lack of support for Webcams was a big minus for Silverlight, and the developers from the first version wanted that functionality.

Silverlight 4 brings a few new things such as HTML code integration within the applications, support for Google Chrome web browser, multi-touch gesture, drag-and-drop, menus on right mouse click and scrolling through a wheel mouse.

As promised, Silverlight 4 supports protected H.264 video via PlayReady DRM. This is now all in the early beta stage, so it is only available for developers in preview edition.