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Source: The Code Project

In my previous post “Introduction to Shapes in Silverlight 4” I introduced you with various types of Shapes available in Silverlight 4 and informed you that, I will post an article describing each one of them and here it is. In this article, I am going to describe you about each shapes and the process to add them in our application (whenever you need). This article is for the Beginners, who don’t know much about the shape controls. If you have any suggestions/concerns please use the feedback section to let me know.

Buy from:

Source: Channel 9

This is a great episode to watch and the first in a periodic series from the RIA Services team in which we will address the top questions from developers.

After a little delay, Tim Heuer finally introduces JetPack – a new Silverlight 4 application theme.

Source: Method ~ of ~ failed

I’m really excited about this theme and the work that our team put together here. You may have see Tsitsi talk about theming in general and introduce this theme on Silverlight TV. The challenge behind this theme was to take some of the excitement around other Silverlight themes and create a great looking overall theme that could be used for line-of-business applications, but also extended as desired by any other application.

David Kelley did a quick review of the book 'Silverlight 4 and SharePoint 2010 Integration' (the book is available with 20% discount for SilverlightShow community).

The chapters are broken out in detail covering related topics from just creating a web part in sharepoint (which if you have never done it before is a pain and having it well documented in a book is great) to WCF, RIA, Rich Media and all the points in between. The book isn't thick and short on words but as mentioned lots of examples which is what is important to me.

The book Microsoft Silverlight 4 and SharePoint 2010 Integration is now available with 20% discount for SilverlightShow community. Use code 20SilvShow at checkout on Packt Publishing website (make sure you are logged in before applying the promo code).

The code is valid by the end of October. Packt Publishing has free shipping to US, UK, Europe and selected Asian countries (see full shipping policy).

Released in July 2010, Microsoft Silverlight 4 and SharePoint 2010 Integration focuses on the integration of Silverlight 4 and SharePoint 2010 and provides step-by-step guidelines for implementing Silverlight RIAs in SharePoint. It is filled with real-world examples that depict the various techniques for interacting with data and services provided by this powerful business collaboration platform, for the enterprise and the Internet.

Expect soon a sample chapter from the book published on SilverlightShow.

Gill Cleeren (sign up for his upcoming webinars for SilverlightShow, October 14th and October 27th) has posted the code for a MEF Marketplace sample in Silverlight.

For a presentation I’m giving shortly, I rebuilt something similar but in Silverlight: the MEF Marketplace in Silverlight. The setup is the following: a user gets an overview of apps he purchased in the market place and can run these on demand. The market place app will download the applications available to the user after the application has started, so this app mainly is a hosting shell for the other ‘purchased” applications to run in. Of course, the sample is a demo and can be extended quite a lot. For example, in the current implementation, I hard-coded the list of purchased apps and there’s no option to buy new ones. Also, it could be extended so that when new apps are purchased, a duplex service notifies the client of this and MEF downloads the new app in the background.

But, instead of talking of what could be added, let’s take a look at what I currently built already!

Cheryl, who owns the security node for the Silverlight documentation on MSDN, has created a security topic for Silverlight 4 release. She saw the need for that following an article concluding that Adobe has put the most effort into security and documenting secure practices.

Recently, there was an article in EWeek about the various platforms for Rich Internet Application (RIA) development, including Silverlight. It was an interesting article but one thing I found a bit worrisome is the author’s conclusion that Adobe has put the most effort into security and documenting secure practices. I own the security node for the Silverlight documentation on MSDN, which means that although I don’t own the feature-specific security concerns, I am responsible for pulling all these pieces together in a coherent way. As part of this charter, for the Silverlight 4 release I created a security topic based largely on a security whitepaper written by Nick, a PM for Silverlight. I worked with Nick to create this topic and it was reviewed by the Silverlight security team.

Gill Cleeren boasts on his blog about the 12 five star reviews received by users on his book Silverlight 4 Data and Services Cookbook. Sample chapter from the book and SilverlightShow interview with Gill are available on SilverlightShow, expect our interview with the co-author Kevin Dockx too.

I was looking at Amazon today and noticed that there were now already 12 reviews on our (Kevin and myself) book, giving the book a whopping 5 star rating, which is of course great!

Here are some of the excerpts:

Ideal for those who prefer a tutorial-oriented writing style, August 30, 2010
HOW THIS COOKBOOK WORKED FOR ME: In contrast, this book ("Microsoft Silverlight 4 Data and Services Cookbook" from PACKT) certainly proved valuable to me by appealing to my learning style, and delivering what was advertised on the cover. I was able to learn a reasonable amount of SL4 specifically for handling business data, using "Microsoft Silverlight 4 Data and Services Cookbook". The format and approach is ideal for those among us who prefer to "cut to the chase" instead of wading through lengthy tirades. The examples build on one another which served to reinforce key concepts through out the book-- money well spent from my perspective.