Windows Phone Mango Silverlight developer toolkit released

Good news, remaining Silverlight fans, you have a new toy today: The Silverlight toolkit for Windows Phone’s Mango update has been released. Yes, Silverlight has managed to hold onto its place at the Windows Phone table, even as Microsoft consistently beats the HTML5 drum wherever it can.

Application submission for Mango begins on August 22nd, just 5 days away, so those developers who do plan on using Silverlight are being given scant time to build what they may want to submit, if they wish to send in their apps on the first day that they are allowed to do so.

It will undoubtedly be read by some that the late release of the Silverlight toolkit reflects poorly on the potential future for Silverlight in the Microsoft web of products and services.

Whatever the case, you can download the toolkit here. New features include: LongListSelector; MultiselectList; LockablePivot; ExpanderView; HubTile; ContextMenu; ListPicker; RecurringDaysPicker; Date & Time Converters; Page Transitions; and PhoneTextBox.

For any developer potentially looking to upgrade their applications to function with new Mango features, Microsoft has compiled a guide here that is worth reading. The coming start date for the submission of Mango applications has led to developers building, but not ‘turning in’ applications, causing total Marketplace submissions to fall in recent weeks. We expect that to change come August 22nd.

Mango itself is a large, and important (from a platform perspective) update to the Windows Phone 7 mobile line. You can read our hands on review of Mango here.