QuickStarts

 I received two emails today asking that I repost my recommendations on how to get started with Silverlight 1.0. Here you go....

The best way to get started is to go to the Silverlight site  and click on Get Starged

From there you can click on Get Started to download the files you need. My advice would be to:

• Skip the  Watch the Getting Started Video
• Download the Silverlight 1.0 runtime(s)
• Download the Developer tools
• VS 2008
• Silverlight 1.1 Tools For VS 2008 (yes 1.1, even though you'll be building 1.0)
• ASP.NET Futures
• Download the designer tools
• Blend 2
• Encoder
• Design (optional)
• Download the 1.0 SDK(s)

For now, you really only need Silverlight 1.0 and can safely skip the 1.1 files, except that you will want Silverlight 1.1 Tools For VS 2008 because it includes what you need to write Silverlight 1.0 applications in Visual Studio 2008 as explained here.

Thank you if you were able to join our Webcast Silverlight For Total Novices. (If you were unable to attend, please keep an eye on the events page for the Recording.)

In the time we had, we could only scratch the surface, but a number of resources were mentioned and I wanted to make sure that I posted links to them so that you can find them easily. While I'm at it I'll add a few other valuable resoruces that were not mentioned.

In imperfect order they include:

1. The best starting point is the Silverlight Site

2.

I received the following email today (edited slightly,  to reflect the spirit of emails I get almost every day)

Jesse, I would like to use Silverlight but I need an idiots guide... can you suggest  how I might get started?

Thanks for writing! The best way to get started is to go to the Silverlight site 

From there you can click on Get Started to download the files you need.

Objective:
This Silverlight demo explains how we draw a graph using Silverlight dynamically by getting data from SQL Server 2005 using Ajax and LinQ.  Secondly once the graph is drawn, when the user moves the mouse on the elements of the graph, another call is made to SQL server to get the details pertaining to the element. By doing this we will simulate drill-down-effect in the graph.

Before you start:
• Install Visual Studio 2008. (http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/default.aspx)
• Install Silverlight 2.0 (http://silverlight.net/)
• Use if IE 7 preferred
• Install Sql Server 2005 http://www.microsoft.com/sql/downloads/trial-software.mspx
• For the purpose of this demo please reduce the security level of you browser as we will be coding Ajax calls via JavaScript.

A great article by Michael O'Brien at Innerworkings on how to get started with Silverlight.

One of the most talked-about aspects of Silverlight is its undeniable technical accomplishments. In an age of 50 megabyte downloads, Microsoft managed to squeeze large parts of WPF and a mini-CLR into a tiny browser plug-in, currently under 5MB. Not only that, but it runs in the three major browsers (Firefox, Safari and IE) and more amazingly on the three major operating systems, with Microsoft supporting Windows and Mac OS X and Novell’s Mono project providing a Linux runtime.