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Silverlight 5 is out, and, despite rumors about its upcoming dismissal by Microsoft, the new version is appealing. The new typographical improvements for example are a neat feature to have. So let's see how to migrate your project to the new framework.

1. Install the new framework

This is the most obvious part. There are three components worthwile to be installed.

• Expression blend 5 preview. This is a preview version which will be finalized when Visual Studio 11 is out, but should be almost production ready. You need to install this before the other downloads.
• Silverlight SDK. This is the SDK which contains all the libraries needed for your project.
• Silverlight Toolkit. The toolkit is a separately available collection of several useful controls.
• Any controls library or any other library you are using should be installed. For example, I am using Component One Studio for Silverlight, so I needed to obtain their Silverlight 5 version and install it.

Remember to restart Visual Studio at this point.

2. Change the project target

Backup everything. Then right click on the project in the Visual Studio Solution Explorer pane, click Properties, and in the Silverlight tab change the Target Silverlight Version to Silverlight 5.

3. Update all the references

If you are using any libraries, now you will need to update the references to the new versions of them. Delete the references which are targeting the Silverlight 4 version, and replace them with references to the newly installed components.

Also, there are several Toolkit references which did not get automatically updated. To find those, click on the references, and check the Version number: it should start with a 5.0... If it starts with a 4.0, then the reference is wrong, and will generate errors.

4. Compile it!

Now your project should compile and run. Congratulations: you have a SL5 project and you can use the new features. In the next part, I will show how to improve typography and fonts.