QuickStarts

Introduction

In Part 6 of this series I looked at implementing a means for displaying reports that appear to be within the application and permitting them to be printed. In each of the articles so far I have discussed major components of line of business application development, but have spent little or no time in styling the application in anticipation of writing an article dedicated to doing so. However that article has turned into seven articles which will become a mini-series within this existing series.

Introduction

Animation Easing are built in animation functions in Silverlight 3. They include several commonly used animations effects.

Overview

I'll describe in details how you can use the BackEase animation. Imagine that you want to move an Ellipse from the top to the bottom of a Canvas. You just create a Storyboard with DoubleAnimation as follows:

Code behind:

OK, but what if you want to make the ellipse move up for a while and after that move down.

Introduction

The SaveFileDialog is a new dialog control in Silverlight 3 which allows the user to save a file on the client machine.

Overview

To demonstrate the common use of the SaveFileDialog I’ll give an example:

When you click on the button a dialog window appears which allows you to save a file.

Introduction

This article continues the series of articles about the .NET RIA Services framework and Silverlight 3. The scope of it is the DomainService class, which is used to create the business logic of the application and how it combines with the ADO.NET Data Model and the Enitity framework.

Here is a link to the live demo at this stage and the source code. Note that they will be updated with each article! ;)

Here are links to the previous parts of the series:

Creating applications with .NET RIA Service  Part 1 - Introduction

Creating applications with .NET RIA Service  Part 2 - Creating the project

Introduction

With the help of the .NET RIA Services framework we are now capable of creating business applications in Silverlight easy and fast. But before starting we should download and install the latest versions of Silverlight 3 and .NET RIA Services. In this article you'll find the needed links and a brief walkthrough of creating the project for our first Silverlight application using the .NET RIA Services Framework, as well as some highlights and explanations about the created project.

Here is a link to the live demo at this stage and the source code. Note that they will be updated with each article! ;)

Here is a link to the first part of the series:

Creating applications with .NET RIA Service  Part 1 - Introduction

.NET RIA Services and Silverlight 3

Before beginning to code your first application, you have to download and install the Silverlight 3 Tools for Visual Studio, which contain the tools, the runtime and the SDK.

Several months ago the guys from Microsoft announced that they are developing a framework for developing Business applications under Silverlight with the codename Alexandria and now it's a reality! On the MIX'09 session a release of it under the name .NET RIA Services was announced.  The possibilities that the framework are really great and allow the Silverlight developers to easily develop business application in a much easier and faster way.

I am starting this series of articles in order to introduce the main features of the .NET RIA Services framework.

Introduction

A cool new feature in Silverlight 3 is the ability to run Silverlight applications out of the browser which resembles a desktop application. Only a few configuration steps are needed to enable your application to run offline.

See also:
Tip: Detecting Network Change in Silverllight 3 Application

Overview

To enable this feature you only need to open the AppManifest.xml file which can be found in the Properties folder and add
some settings as follows:

Introduction

A new feature in Silverlight 3 is the Perspective Transforms. With its help you can simulate rotating an object in 3D space. Note that this is not a real 3D, Silverlight does not support 3D yet.

Overview

Let's start with a little demo: 

And we have the following result:

1. Introduction

Whatever software application you want to create, the most important problem that must be solved is the tight coupling. Mixing one layer with another is a very common mistake and it is the main reason for your application to be tightly coupled. For example: as a practical example in this article I will create a simple data entry application, which purpose is to load, create, edit, delete and save data. The most straightforward way to create the application is to put everything in the user interface (handling the button’s click events and writing the code there). It is the easiest way but it is far from the best. This will produce a low quality code and high complexity. And when the things are tightly coupled, one change can lead you into chasing breaking changes in the whole code. So the most important thing is to keep the layers separate, one layer – one responsibility. Yes, it is true, that creating an application with separate tiers requires additional work, but this may save you a headache in the future.

The most famous solutions and approaches (patterns) for creating a multi layer application are the MVC and MVP patterns. Since Silverlight does not require reinventing the wheel, these patterns and practices can be applied with great success when you create a Silverlight application. In previous articles I showed you how the Model-View-Presenter (MVP) pattern and the Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern can be used in Silverlight. Today I decided to continue and to present you another pattern – it is the Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM). MVVM is tailor-made for WPF and it is an adaptation of the MVC and MVP.

View live demo

Download source

Note: This article is submitted by Thomas Kirchmair for Silverlight: Write and Win contest.Thanks a lot, Thomas! Hello All, Please drop a comment if you like it.

1. Introduction

My recent aim in coding with Microsoft's Silverlight is to support ASP.NET developers by solving common ASP.NET- and HTML-problems scenarios easily with Silverlight applications and tools. The project of this article here shows my idea of solving the annoying ASP.NET-DropDownList bandwidth- and ViewState-problem with a huge amount of option items inside the control.

Using the normal ASP.NET-DropDownList with enabled ViewState is quite simple and easy, but the time you fill your ASP.NET-DropDownList with a great amount of option items.