Moonlight 4 preview released

The Mono Project has released a preview of the new version of Moonlight, the Linux variant of Microsoft’s Silverlight. Version 4 supports some of the features in Silverlight 4 and is fully backwards compatible with previous versions.

According to for the developers, this is the first time a release of Moonlight has been able to handle content created for the most recent version of Silverlight. In addition to full support for version 3 and older of Silverlight, some version 4 APIs are now supported. Among other things, h264 video, hardware graphics acceleration, 3D transformations and pixel shaders are supported by the preview of Moonlight 4. In addition, the speed of the plug-in has been improved and it can now also be used in combination with Chrome.

Moonlight is the open source Linux variant of Microsoft’s Silverlight, and is made by Novell and the people behind the Mono platform. The plug-in is being developed with help from Microsoft, which gives developers access to extensive specifications and various test programs. Moonlight is still lagging behind Silverlight to date. Microsoft wants to release a beta of version 5 in the first half of this year, after which the final should be released before the end of the year.