Search

Q: I like the capabilities of value converters in Silverlight, but they're really a pain to write. I'm creating one for different situations, each with several conditions. For example, one converter is if something is to be made visible on true, and another is to be visible when the bound value is false. Is there a way to make this easier?

A: Value converters are extremely powerful. They implement IValueConverter, and they have two methods: Convert and ConvertBack. Value converters are valuable in minimizing the code required directly in the UI and in providing reuse of conversion logic.

Q: I'm writing a Silverlight 3 application to run in the sandbox. Can I store history information for the user on their local machine or do I need to pass this information back to the server for storage?

A: I'll show you how to store information on the user's local machine, but first let me warn you of the possible pitfall.

Q: In Silverlight I want to display a list of complex bound criteria, which includes data, child data and photos for each item. The requirement is for the list to be displayed horizontally with only one item displayed at a time. Is this possible?

A: There are at least two approaches to solving this: a ListBox and a DataForm. In Silverlight 3, I wasn't able to scroll the ListBox incrementally, resulting in partially displayed items. In some cases this might be desirable, but the DataForm offers a clean incremental scroll. Figure 1 shows the DataForm solution. Both approaches use a DataTemplate that allows reuse of control layouts.

Kathleen Dollard has an article for the Visual Studio Magazine in which she is talking about displaying multiple pages in Silverlight.