SilverlightShow: Silverlight Community

Essential Silverlight 2.0 (Microsoft .NET Development Series)

editorial@silverlightshow.net ( Ashraf Michail) — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0400

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Product Description

After building an application, people often ask why theirs doesn’t work as well as another similar Silverlight application. The product team answers those questions on a case-by-case basis. However, the root cause of much of this confusion is a lack of knowledge of the inner workings of the system. The functional API description provided by the SDK, Web materials, and other books allow developers to build an application that looks and behaves as they expect but when it comes to problems such as application performance and deployment, a much deeper knowledge of the product is required.

Essential Silverlight 2.0 provides an under-the-covers look at the design decisions and inner workings of the Silverlight platform from the architect himself, Ashraf Michail. Microsoft Silverlight is a rapidly growing Web technology that allows developers to deliver graphics, video, and rich interactive applications on multiple operating systems and browsers. The availability of material that gives developers behind-the-scenes insight is scarce. Providing insights into the motivating design principles and inner workings of the run-time, this book is for developers who want to get the most out of Silverlight. After reading this book, the reader will have an understanding of why some Silverlight applications work better than others and, with that understanding, will be able to get more out of Silverlight in his or her own applications.

About the Author

Ashraf Michail is the only Microsoft architect who has continued to work on Silverlight since the original project began. In 2001, he joined Microsoft's newly forming WPF team, where he built the GPU accelerated graphics engine used to render WPF content and included in the Vista Desktop Window Manager. In 2004, he became a WPF architect focused on improving the end-to-end WPF experience. In 2005, he became an architect on the new Silverlight team, where he is currently working on Silverlight's next release. With nine years of experience delivering web platforms and rendering engines, Michail's deep insights have guided Silverlight's design.

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Silverlight 2.0 Programmer's Reference

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0400

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Silverlight 2 Programmers Reference introduces developers to the second release of Microsoft’s Silverlight platform, showing them how to create powerful Rich Interactive Applications (RIAs). The book focuses not only on the capabilities provided by the Silverlight 2 platform, but introduce them to the languages, tools and techniques used to build applications on the platform.

This book will consist of an introductory-level tutorial followed by reference material. The tutorial itself consists of 4 parts. Part 1 introduces the developer to the Silverlight platform. In addition, it covers the basics of XAML, Silverlight 2's CoreCLR and the data and communications frameworks, and Silverlight developer tools like Expression Blend.

Part 2 dives into the specific capabilities of the Silverlight 2 platform, showing readers how to use controls, work with text, lay out views, style applications, use graphics and visuals, work with audio and video capabilities, and use services for communications, data, download, and install. Each chapter provides a mini-tutorial on each topic, with cross-refernces to supporting reference material that can be found in the appendixes.

Part 3 shows the reader how to tie together the building blocks described in Part 2 to create holistic Silverlight applications. Upon completion of this part of the book, the reader will have a thorough understanding of how Silverlight applications are architected, developed and designed.

Part 4 covers the real-world problems readers may face in building their applications. It reviews several real-world samples designed to not only educate the reader, but also to inspire, and finishes with a walk-through of a complete, working application.

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The Zen of XAML: Designer and Developer Collaboration in WPF and Silverlight

editorial@silverlightshow.net ( Robby Ingebretsen) — Mon, 25 May 2009 00:00:00 -0400

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Product Description

With XAML, Silverlight, and the Expression suite of web development software, Microsoft has provided all the tools that designers, developers, and managers need to collaborate on creating breakthrough user experiences. However, designers and developers have traditionally found it difficult to collaborate, and the mere presence of the tools doesn't solve that problem. There's been a growing clamor for reliable, practical information on making this collaboration work in real enterprises. In The Zen of XAML, Robby Ingebretsen offers this desperately needed guidance. Ingrebetsen is singularly well qualified to write this book. He is a leading edge "creative developer" with a deep understanding both the technical and design issues involved - and also former program manager for Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). Ingrebetsen offers a specific and detailed roadmap for effective collaboration and workflow on projects that involve both state-of-the-art design and software development. Drawing on his unique experience, he shares a nuanced perspective on the collaboration-enabling capabilities of WPF and Silverlight. He gives designers the information and support they need to buy in and "take ownership" of their new integration-related roles; and helps developers understand how implementing workflow can benefit them, and what they need to do to support it.

About the Author

Robby Ingebretsen (Tacoma, WA) is Director of Creative Development for IdentityMine, a leading user experience consulting firm. He has led the company's efforts to define and document many of its internal workflow and collaboration processes. He was formerly Program Manager for Microsoft's Windows Presentation Foundation team, where he helped develop WPF's component and templating infrastructure. While at Microsoft, he spent a great deal of time thinking about workflows and ways to help developers and designers work together more smoothly. He speaks at numerous conferences, including MIX. He currently blogs at blog.nerdplusart.com.

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Silverlight 2 Lab: Intensive Skills Training

editorial@silverlightshow.net ( Andrew Troelsen) — Fri, 01 May 2009 00:00:00 -0400

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Product Description

Silverlight 2 Lab presents a new approach to learning about Silverlight. Andrew Troelsen, author and .NET trainer, simulates the highly effective teaching and presentation techniques of a corporate training workshop in order to provide a deep treatment of Silverlight 2 in an accessible manner.

Each chapter begins with a focused “traditional treatment” in which the scope of the chapter and the topics that will be covered are discussed and the course of the training lab laid out. Then, once the stage has been set, the bulk of the chapter takes the form of a hands–on lab that walks you deeply through the topic in a highly experiential manner, with new techniques and ideas encountered and explained as you progress. For this reason, the book is targeted at experienced .NET developers who already possess a good knowledge of C# and an outline understanding of what Silverlight is. Starting at this level allows readers to dive deeply into the subject from the very beginning.

What you’ll learn

The syntax and semantics of Silverlight 2 and what it takes to write good code
How to create media–rich web content (graphics, animations, audio–video integration)
The use of the Silverlight data–binding model and CLR/base class library support (including WCF, isolated storage, and threading)
How to utilize the ASP.NET Silverlight web controls to augment your existing sites
Best practices for Visual Studio 2008, Microsoft Expression Blend, and other Silverlight programming tools

Who is this book for

This book is for competent .NET developers who are adopting Silverlight. It is assumed you are comfortable with C# and the fundamentals of .NET architecture. If in doubt, a primer such as Accelerated C# 2008 by Trey Nash (Apress, 2007) will bring you up to speed with the necessary skills before you tackle these training labs.

About the Author

Andrew Troelsen is a partner, trainer, and consultant at Intertech-Inc., and is a leading authority on both .NET and COM. His book Pro C# 2005 and the .NET 2.0 Platform won the prestigious 2003 Referenceware Excellence Award and is now in its third edition. Also of note are his earlier five-star treatment of traditional COM in the bestselling Developer's Workshop to COM and ATL mirrored in his book, COM and .NET Interoperability, and his top-notch investigation of VB .NET in Visual Basic .NET and the .NET Platform: An Advanced Guide. Troelsen has a degree in mathematical linguistics and South Asian studies from the University of Minnesota and is a frequent speaker at numerous .NET-related conferences. He currently lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with his wife, Amanda, and spends his free time investigating .NET and waiting for the Wild to win the Stanley Cup.

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Hacking Silverlight 2

editorial@silverlightshow.net ( David Kelley) — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0400

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Silverlight 2, Microsoft's new web framework for developing rich internet applications, brings the developer and the designer together. This cross-browser, web-oriented subset of Microsoft Windows Presentation Foundation plugs into the browser and provides an easy-to-use toolkit for building rich internet applications in JavaScript or any .NET language such as C# or VB. When coupled with designer-friendly graphics tools like Microsoft Expression Blend, designers, web developers, bloggers, and CSS/HTML beginners can all take advantage of Silverlight's comprehensive platform.

Hacking Silverlight is an example-rich Silverlight tutorial that explores the developer/designer workflow key to any successful internet application. This book teaches you in small steps supported by larger lab examples. After you master the basics, you'll learn to work on projects in Visual Studio and Expression Blend at the same time, how to use source control to manage your projects, how to deploy applications successfully, and more.

As part of an elite group hand-picked by Microsoft to test early Silverlight builds and develop sample applications, author David Kelley has hundreds of hours of production-level Silverlight experience. This book guides the reader through a running case study of an actual, large scale Silverlight project created by the author. You'll also learn to create gadgets and mashups using cutting-edge environments like Volta and Popfly. Along the way, you'll pick up unique tips and best practices based on the author's unusually-deep experience with Silverlight 2.

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Silverlight 2 Web Development: Problem-Design- Solution

Mon, 06 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0400

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Product Description

* As Microsoft's solution for building rich, interactive applications, Silverlight is gaining rapid popularity among ASP.NET developers
* This book shows how to enhance Web applications with Silverlight 1.1 via a tutorial that walks readers through each stage of application development
* The author team uses the extremely popular TheBeerHouse application to present readers with a problem, a design, and the solution, with the end result being a real-world, working application that demonstrates the graphics, animation, audio, and video capabilities of Silverlight 1.1

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Microsoft Silverlight 2.0 A Beginner's Guide

editorial@silverlightshow.net ( Shannon Horn) — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0400

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Product Description

Essential Skills Made Easy!
This hands-on guide prepares software developers to create next-generation Web and Windows applications using Microsoft Silverlight--the new technology that extends the .NET Framework to the client. The book covers Microsoft Silverlight 2.0, the .NET Framework 3.5, and prerequisite technologies. You will learn to use Silverlight to stream multimedia content across the Web, create dynamic, data-driven Silverlight applications, and implement security.

About the Author

Shannon Horn is Microsoft Windows and Web-based solutions developer, trainer, and author.

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Studio for Silverlight wins Jolt Award

editorial@silverlightshow.net ( Silverlight Show) — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 06:51:00 -0400

ComponentOne Studio for Silverlight won the Jolt Excellence Award 2009 in the category "Libraries, Frameworks and Components". This is the only Silverlight product that got an award. See all Jolt winners.

Port your XNA Game to Silverlight

editorial@silverlightshow.net ( Silverlight Show) — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 05:22:00 -0400

Bill Reiss has made a wrapper for the XNA Game Library that you can use to quickly port your 2D game from XNA to Silverlight.

Silverlight Rain Effect - Playing with Random

editorial@silverlightshow.net ( Silverlight Show) — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 05:16:00 -0400

Gavin Wignall will show you how to use the Random command in Silverlight to simulate rain falling without risking a repetitive effect.

The slider controls the amount of rain drops that fall per second. At the left end of the slider there will be 1 rain drop produced every 40th of a second, at the right end there will be 10 rain drops produced every 40th of a second. This is done using a ‘For’ loop, the amount of loops being controlled by the slider.

Deep Zoom Collections explained Part 1 - coordinates and viewports

editorial@silverlightshow.net ( Silverlight Show) — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 04:59:00 -0400

If you find the question for the coordinates in DeepZoom confusing and you want to clear it, then you better read the article of Lutz Gerhard.

I've been getting this question a lot, even from members of my team. Why are the coordinates so weird in deep zoom? They are just totally confusing for laying out images! Why do you have this odd ViewportOrigin and ViewportWidth and why are the numbers I put in there so different from what I think they should be?

DeepZoom Training Videos

editorial@silverlightshow.net ( Silverlight Show) — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 04:52:00 -0400

Arturo Toledo has posted four videos that will help you create DeepZoom experiences in a snap.

I’m heading to SxSW tomorrow morning and I’m expecting lots of folks will want to learn more about using DeepZoom Composer to create immersive photo experiences with the help of Silverlight.

Showing and Hiding Series in Chart

editorial@silverlightshow.net ( Silverlight Show) — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 04:46:00 -0400

At Lee's Corner there is an article about showing and hiding series in chart. You can see a demo or download the code.

Showing and hiding a particular series will be nice addition to charts to allow the user to pick and choose what to see. we want the user to be able to click the legenditem to toggle the display of the series.

Visibility pattern in Silverlight

editorial@silverlightshow.net ( Silverlight Show) — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 04:03:00 -0400

Corey Schuman has a new blog post concentrated on visibility pattern in Silverlight.

The Visibility pattern is way of overriding the base Visibility of a control and adding a custom animation. There are a couple ways of hiding a control on screen 1.) setting the Opacity to 0 or 2.) setting the Visibility of the object to Collapsed. Depending on the situation, the latter is probably a preferred way of hiding an object because once collapsed, the space for that control is freed up.

Unit Testing Silverlight Animation

editorial@silverlightshow.net ( Silverlight Show) — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 05:57:00 -0400

Nigel Sampson has a post in which he is running through the tests for AnimationBase and SizeAnimation.

One thing I haven't really included in any of the example Silverlight posts are the unit tests. There's continuous debate among developers concerning the effectiveness of unit tests, in my opinion they're absolutely necessary whenever you're building an application. Test driven development (TDD) on the other hand I still find very hard, it's a different way to approach development that seems difficult to pick up without peer programming with someone who already has this approach.

Tutorial: Create a Fiery Button

editorial@silverlightshow.net ( Silverlight Show) — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 05:53:00 -0400

Alex Knight has posted a tutorial on how to create a fiery button.

This tutorial will show you how to create a button template that looks like it has a fire lurking inside.

For this tutorial we will start off in Expression Design to create the graphics for the button, then we will move into Expression Blend to create the button template and animate it.

Using Silverlight to Build a Guitar Chord Calculator

editorial@silverlightshow.net ( Silverlight Show) — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 05:42:00 -0400

John Papa announced that his article on building a guitar chord calculator with Silverlight was just published by Simple-Talk. You may also check the CodePlex source and the Demo.

One of the advantages of using Silverlight is that it can be used to build any type of application, including games. As well as spending a lot of time building varying types of business applications and writing a book that focuses on building data driven applications, I’ve also spent time building less traditional and more fun programs with Silverlight. Regardless of the type of application and its requirements, there are some key aspects of Silverlight development that apply. This article explains how to apply some common and widely-used aspects of Silverlight to build a guitar chord finder.

Collision testing on a free moving object in Silverlight

editorial@silverlightshow.net ( Silverlight Show) — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 05:32:00 -0400

In a previous post Gavin Wignall dabbled in making a dragable bouncy ball that simulated a gravity effect when released. Now he has taken that project and cleaned it up a bit to get rid of most of the bugs. In addition to the dragable ball there is also a box (’Move me’) that you can drag that the bouncy ball will bounce off / on. Read the whole post or grab the code and start playing.

RadioButtons in a DataTemplate in Silverlight

editorial@silverlightshow.net ( Silverlight Show) — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 05:24:00 -0400

To illustrate the mechanics of Attached Behaviors, Karim Hernandez decided to implement a working RadioButtonGroup.

I was recently asked by a customer, “Why doesn’t RadioButton.GroupName work when a single RadioButton is put in a DataTemplate within an ItemsControl?” I had no answer. When I tried it out myself, lo and behold, two checked RadioButtons were staring back at me. A quick search told me that others have encountered this issue, and none had found a solution based in markup.

Pete Brown's Silverlight Development Machine

editorial@silverlightshow.net ( Silverlight Show) — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 05:18:00 -0400

Pete Brown has posted the tools and products he uses on a regular basis when working in Silverlight.

There are others that pop up now and again, but I figured I’d only list the things I really rely on daily. I try to keep my working set fairly small so I can stay focused.

Using WinDbg, SOS, and GCRoot to diagnose a .NET memory leak

editorial@silverlightshow.net ( Silverlight Show) — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 05:08:00 -0400

In his last post, David Anson explained how it was possible for "hidden" event handlers to introduce memory leaks and showed an easy way to prevent such leaks. Now he is going to show how to diagnose a .NET memory leak with the help of WinDbg, SOS, and GCRoot.

What if you don't know the source of the memory leak in the first place? Knowing how something is leaking is the first step to fixing it, and the web has some great resources for learning more about tracking down managed memory leaks in WPF and Silverlight applications. I am not going to try to duplicate that information here. :) Instead, I'll refer interested readers to these excellent resources and recommend a bit of web searching if additional background is needed.

Silverlight Design and Animation: Slides and Links

editorial@silverlightshow.net ( Silverlight Show) — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 05:02:00 -0400

Andy Beaulieu has posted slides, demos and links from a discussion with his participation at the CNY .NET Developer Group.

We had a great turnout and discussed using Expression Blend to Draw, Animate, and Style a Silverlight application.

Techdays 2009 Belgium slides and demos

editorial@silverlightshow.net ( Silverlight Show) — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 04:55:00 -0400

Gill Cleeren has posted the slides and the demos from his sessions at the TechDays 2009 Belgium.

I've delivered quite some sessions, including part of the keynote. A lot of people asked me to share the slides as well as the demos, so here are all the items you need to complete your knowledge on both databinding in WPF as well as skinning controls in Silverlight.

Working on a Silverlight Multi-Player Library

editorial@silverlightshow.net ( Silverlight Show) — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 04:48:00 -0400

Cameron Albert has been porting out the multi-player aspects of Perenthia into a separate library. As soon as he gets it cleaned up a little he will put it up on CodePlex and provide a tutorial and sample application showing how to implement and use the component.

The library will be focused on providing an easy way to get setup and implement a multi-player structure. You will still need our own game engine and associated components.

JavaFx vs Flash vs Silverlight

editorial@silverlightshow.net ( Silverlight Show) — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 04:22:00 -0400

Terence Tsang has released a new comparison on JavaFx, Flash and Silverlight.

I picked up one of my previous sample Fps Meter and clone it using JavaFx. To reduce my effort, I started my implementation using the Carousel Sample provided in JavaFx Website.

The development isn’t that smooth. I have spent more than 2 hours in modifying the sample.