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Wow. That's an incredible feeling, seeing my name on Amazon :) The book is in pre-order!! I'd better get back to editing it then :) Read More...
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I've been working since September 2007 (more or less) on an upcoming Silverlight book titled "Teach Yourself Silverlight in 24 Hours" at Sams. This book will be aimed at beginners with the technology (and maybe even beginners in programming). The reader is walked (with a lot of code samples and step-by-step examples) through most features of this amazing technology. The book has 24 chapters, each of them taking more or less (maybe rather a little more than a little less, to be honest :)) one hour to read. There are really tons of demos and cool examples, and so far the feedback I got has been really great. Clearly, the whole of Silverlight cannot be taught in 24 hours :) but the book should give a very good and deep insight in this framework, and give the reader a taste for more. I also tried to show where additional resources can be found, and to allow the user to continue their education on their own after they finish reading. Below, you will find the table of content for the first 13 Read More...
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Here we go, Silverlight 2 beta 2 can be downloaded and installed! I had the chance to take part to an "insiders" program at Microsoft, and to play with SL2 b2 for a couple of weeks, and it's a good one. You should switch to b2 as soon as you can! There are obviously incompatibilities between b1 and b2, but much, much less than between the alpha version and b1. We're getting there!! Silverlight 2 beta 2 will be used to build applications related to the Beijing olympics, so it's going to be a real nature test for that version. As for the final release.... it's still very much hush hush, so let's leave it for now :) The best place to start is ScottGu's blog . As usual, Scott describes the new features at length, and has links to all the places where you can download the good stuff. Note that there is also a new version of Blend 2.5 which can be installed next to a "normal" Expression Blend V2. There is supposed to be a new version of Deep Zoom Composer too, but the download seems to be down Read More...
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I have been in very much stress lately and hardly had time to post, but I don't forget you, dear readers... Anyway, this Thursday, I will be talking in a RIA conference organized by the Internet Briefing group here in Zurich, in the World Trade Center. My talk is titled "Ultra Rich Interactive Applications with WPF" and subtitled "When Silverlight is not enough..." . I think it's going to be an interesting talk (but obviously I am partial) about the major differences between WPF and Silverlight, and the added richness that WPF provides. I am a big fan of Silverlight, but I have to admit that it's nice going back to the amazing power of WPF sometimes, without having to worry about "is that feature even implemented in Silverlight"? The talk takes place between 16:30 and 17:30 in the World Trade Center, Leutschenbachstrasse 95, 8050 Zürich. Hoping to see some of you there, maybe! Read More...
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This article is for Silverlight 2 beta 1 Apparently, one reader had issues declaring events for the User Control example that I posted earlier this week. He is programming in VB and unfortunately I don't have a lot of experience with VB.NET, so I first created a working example with C#, and if that still doesn't translate well to VB, I'll try to make an example in that language too. I am sure that I can count on my VB.NET expert friends (that's you, Karl) to help if needed. The big difference between WPF and Silverlight regarding events is that Silverlight doesn't support Routed Events (yet?). To be precise, some events are routed (all input events like MouseLeftButtonDown, KeyDown, etc... Instead of declaring RoutedEvents in our User Control, we have to resort to standard .NET events then. From a user point of view, it doesn't make a very big difference in the subscribing, but of course these events will not tunnel nor bubble (for a summary of RoutedEvents, bubbling and tunneling in WPF, Read More...
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Introduction I guess that it's time to write about it, after making a few people curious at the MVP summit in Seattle. This article is to be taken as a proof of concept, and (I hope) as a way to "motivate" Microsoft to integrate this ability into Silverlight. As soon as I started playing with Silverlight, I saw the great potential that this technology has. As a RIA technology, it provides extended functionality over the web. As a WPF subset, it allows me to leverage the knowledge I already acquired in the past, and to reuse it for web applications. This in itself makes Silverlight a technology I *have to* learn. But what if... what if we could use Silverlight to run lightweight .NET applications in standalone mode? A little like Adobe AIR is offering, but with the power of .NET instead of ActionScript. Imagine a small application, running on a small framework, installed in typically 10 seconds. I posted an article on my site explaining the thought process and giving information about standalone Read More...
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This article is for Silverlight 2 beta 1 There is a common misconception that User Controls in Silverlight must be placed in the assembly from which they are referenced. However, this is not true, you can have user controls in an assembly and use them from another assembly. This is not a direct process, however, so let's see how to proceed: Preparing the control Create a new Silverlight 2 application in Visual Studio. In this example, we'll name this application "UserControlsPacking". For this first application, you can choose to generate a test web application, or to use a basic HTML test page. In the same solution, create another Silverlight application. Let's name it "UserControlsPacking.Controls". Choose the "Generate a HTML test page" option, to avoid creating unnecessary test projects. In the moment, Silverlight 2 beta 1 has only 2 project templates available: "Silverlight Application" and "Silverlight Class Library". Ideally, we would need a "Silverlight User Control Library", just Read More...
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I am currently writing a Silverlight class library which I want to use in a project, and decided to try Test Driven Development for this class. This is a really nice way to work, and the Silverlight development team made this very easy by providing a unit test framework easy to integrate into Visual Studio 2008. (Note: You cannot simply use the built-in unit test framework, because a non-Silverlight application cannot reference a Silverlight class library). To find information about where to download and how to install the Silverlight unit test framework, check this post . Communicating with JavaScript The only issue with the Silverlight unit test application is that it uses a default HTML test page to instantiate the Silverlight control. If your class library contains one or more JavaScript code files that it interacts with, the test will fail, because the JavaScript file cannot be found. Thankfully, this is quite easy to change: Start by creating the Silverlight class library that you Read More...
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Introduction In WPF, one of the best know effects is the "reflection" effect, where a scene reflects itself dynamically. It's a very cool feature, because it's really easy to realize, and it allows to reflect images, but also videos or other User Interface scenes. The key to this is to use a VisualBrush. Silverlight is not exactly as powerful as WPF, and doesn't have VisualBrush, but it has ImageBrush and VideoBrush, both of them allowing cool media reflection effects (these brushes can also be used for other things!). The key to making a reflection is placing a picture (or a video), and underneath it, an element (typically a Border). Then, you set the background of this element (Border.Background) to an ImageBrush (or a VideoBrush) pointing to the source that you want to reflect. To make the reflection look more lifelike, however, you want to skew it (because the surface you reflect is forming an angle with the reflecting element); also, you typically use an OpacityMask and make it look Read More...
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Here is an interesting one: < UserControl x:Class ="GalaSoft.SL.ScrollViewerNoCrash.Page" xmlns ="http://schemas.microsoft.com/client/2007" xmlns:x ="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" Height ="300" > < Grid x:Name ="LayoutRoot" Background ="Green" > < Grid.RowDefinitions > < RowDefinition Height ="*" /> < RowDefinition /> </ Grid.RowDefinitions > < ScrollViewer Grid . Row ="1" HorizontalScrollBarVisibility ="Auto" VerticalScrollBarVisibility ="Disabled" > < StackPanel Orientation ="Horizontal" Height ="150" > < Border Margin ="10,5,10,5" BorderBrush ="#FFA9A899" BorderThickness ="2,2,2,2" > < Image Source ="pic1.png" Stretch ="Fill" /> </ Border > < Border Margin ="10,5,10,5" BorderBrush ="#FFA9A899" BorderThickness ="2,2,2,2" > < Image Source ="pic2.jpg" Stretch ="Fill" /> </ Border > </ StackPanel > </ ScrollViewer > </ Grid > </ UserControl > The code above crashes Read More...
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If anyone still needed to see the Power of Skinning for Silverlight controls, well, Corrina just did it (again). In addition to the 3 existing skins " Bubbly ", " Red " and " Flat ", she just published a 4th one " Rough " (click on the links for a live demo, requires Silverlight 2 beta 1). More information about the skins, including a download link for the source code, can be found on Corrina's blog ( Bubbly, Red, Flat ; Rough ) Rough skin Bubbly skin Red skin Flat skin Read More...
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In the "old" alpha edition of Silverlight, you could use the Downloader class to download a zip file containing one or many packed media elements (images, videos). The Downloader provided a progress report (to update a progress bar, for example). After the download was completed, you could use the Image.SetSource or MediaElement.SetSource method to directly unpack one file from the downloaded zip file. In Silverlight 2 beta, the interfaces changed, but you can still do the same operations. Let's see how . Download and Demo A demo can be seen here . The source code is available here. Note: To save space, I removed the media zip file from the source code. It is available as a separate download here . Read More...
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Silverlight 2 now packs all the files needed to run the application in a XAP file (which is essentially a ZIP file). Think of the XAP file a little as the JAR files of Java applets. Because these files must be served by the web server in the correct way, it is necessary to pay attention to this extension (we had exactly the same problem when XBAPs were introduced, or for serving "pure XAML files". Brad Abrams has a post explaining the problem , and showing how to configure your IIS6 web server. If you have IIS7, you apparently don't need to do anything. If you use a ISP, check with them how to add the MIME type to the web server (note: many ISPs nowadays use IIS7, so you should be all set already.) If you serve Silverlight applications from an Apache web server or any other web server for that matter, you want to configure the MIME types, so check Brad's article :) Read More...
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Check WindowsClient.net for updates Some parts of the demos are not available yet in the current build - wait for the next beta Compatibility with Silverlight is important Same tools, designers, code, markup... This summer, .NET framework 3.5 service release Improved setup Fuill install available Also client-focused ~30MB install Parts of WCF Parts of LINQ WPF Deployment of application will be simplified MSI, ClickOnce, XBAP MSDN Reader demoed, looks really good. Source code is available Add-In framework demo HTTP requests, can access cookies in XBAPs and also standalone apps WCF support in XBAPs Lots of 3rd party controls available, check Brad Abrams blog New virtualization model "Recycling virtualization" Uses the same UI elements already created Faster than normal UI virtualization Turned off by default --> must be enabled in code Deferred scrolling enables moving the scrollbar but the UI only scrolls when the scrollbar is released Datagrid demo Won't be as powerful as 3rd party datagrids Read More...
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Robbie Ingebretsen: "This is a creative experiment" "We didn't always look into best practices" Talks about the Integrator role. Nathan Dunlap: "Designers should probably use Visual Studio more" "It's a great tool to dive into the code,check the SDK..." Snippets are distributed as a Snippet installer VSI file. Silverlight code snippets WPF code snippets By the way, check Dr WPF's snippets too! To access the Nerd snippets in the code, simply type "nerd". Displays the list of all snippets. Custom Control to display image sequences, provided for free. "ImageSequencer.cs" Propery SourceFolder, points tothe folder containing the sequence of images Snippet "Storyboard" allows to modify values of a storyboard from code. Snippet "Sound player" provides a lightweight way to play sounds. Value converters Provides a default implementation Creating a new custom panel WrapPanel in Silverlight DeepZoom snippet for Silverlight, looks pretty cool! Provides easy zooming into a DeepZoom prepared image. Get Read More...
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