I was recently re-paving my machine and thought that it might be fun to show off what I use to prepare a machine for Silverlight development…so here goes:

• Visual Studio + SP1: Goes without saying.
• **Silverlight Tools for Visual Studio: **'nuff said.
• Expression Blend 2 + SP1: My favorite XAML tool…yeah its for developers too…promise!
• Expression Design: I use this tool to convert .ai and .eps files to Silverlight XAML. Mostly when I need to use clipart in my Silverlight Apps.
• Expression Media Encoder: To create Silverlight Videos.
• **Deep Zoom Composer: **Create Deep Zoom Images and create SL projects with it.
• Adobe Illustrator XAML Export Plugin**: **New version of the plugin exports to Silverlight easily!
• KAXAML: A great interactive XAML editor.
• Silverlight 2 DataGrid Update (Dec 2008): Bug Fixes for the DataGrid.
• Silverlight Toolkit: Charting, Themes, Silverlight Testing Framework and more…
• Silverlight Contrib: Page Brooks’ open source project including port of SharpZipLib, Color picker, cool menu and great Silverlight specific code snippets (et al.).
• Silverlight.FX: Nikhil Kothari’s great set of Silverlight code including great transitions and effective library (and a MVVM library).
• **FireBug: **Firefox Web Development plugin.
• IE Developer Toolbar: Great way to view the HTML in IE7 (automatically included in IE8).
• Fiddler2: A HTTP Debugging Proxy for debugging network requests…a MUST HAVE.
• Prism for Silverlight: For architecting large Silverlight projects.
• Rockscroll: Not Silverlight specific but a great replacement for the scrollbar in VS.
• World of Goo: You have to take a break from coding…don’t you?

Anything I missed that you can’t live without?

UPDATE: Great feedback found some more I failed to list:

• Reflector: View approximations of the real code and metadata of .NET assemblies (works with Silverlight assemblies too).
• Silverlight Spy: A great way to look at how Silverlight Applications work and works with reflector to see the code too.
• Paint.NET: An open source image editor that does most of what I need for simple image editing, sizing and touch-ups for free!
• Silverlight Extensions: Another control library with some cool features.
• Blacklight Silverlight Controls: A great free suite of controls unlike I’ve seen anywhere else.