The much-anticipated beta 2 of Visual Studio 2008 has been released this morning by Microsoft.

As reported yesterday, Microsoft had planned to release beta 2 sometime this week. It's part of a rollout of a number of developer-related products, including an update to the .NET Framework and Silverlight.

The crown jewel, however, is VS 2008. Code-named "Orcas," the first beta was released in April. Although the product is officially set to launch on Feb. 27, 2008, along with Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008, it's expected to be finished before the end of this year.

The last major update of Visual Studio was Visual Studio 2005, released in October 2005. The first-ever release of a Visual Studio product was Visual Studio 97. VS 2008 marks the sixth major release of the product line, used by developers to build software for various Microsoft products, including Microsoft Office, Windows Vista, and Web development.

Beta 2 can be downloaded here.

In just a couple of weeks, developers will be able to get their hands on the release candidate of Silverlight 1.0, Microsoft's new cross-platform browser media plug-in.

Microsoft technical evangelist Tim Sneath revealed the news on his blog on Friday. Microsoft watcher Mary Jo Foley notes on her blog Microsoft officials have previously indicated Silverlight 1.0 will launch this summer.

While Microsoft touts the 1.0 version Silverlight as a powerful vehicle for delivering hi-def video and rich content over the Web, the 1.1 version of the plug-in -- now in alpha -- is broader in scope. It delivers a version of the Common Language Runtime and includes support for dynamic languages, with the idea being that developers can code RIA apps for multiple platforms with Microsoft's managed code framework and dev tools.

Microsoft put out the 1.0 beta at its MIX07 conference in the spring. According to Sneath, the dev team has since done work resulting in "a few breaking changes between the beta and release candidate."

Microsoft has prepared a special SDK, which will help those who have created apps with the beta release to get ready for the RC, according to Sneath: "To be clear, this preview release does not contain the Silverlight 1.0 RC itself; it's a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation in that we want to get sites ready before we release the RC, but it's hard for folk to be sure they're ready until we release the RC!"

Sneath noted that "moving forward, the API is stable: there should be no further breaking changes between the release candidate and the final release."

With Silverlight, Redmond is hoping to knock off Adobe's long-dominant Flash technology, as Redmond Developer News columnist and Directions on Microsoft analyst Greg DeMichillie discusses here.

Though Microsoft has stressed the cross-platform nature of Silverlight, to date it has not provided a Linux version. However, a team led by Miguel de Icaza, Novell's vice president of development, has already demoed a version of the plug-in running on a Linux system.

The SDK is available for download here.