Silverlight 4 is the latest version of Silverlight and the following “Get Started”
sections will outline tools and features based on the Version 4 release. The “Get
Started” Section is intended to simplify your overall search for Silverlight resources
as well as your learning process by sharing links to the extensive Silverlight content
on SilverlightShow.
So let’s get started with Silverlight 4 at the speed of light!
Table of contents:
Silverlight is a powerful development platform for creating interactive user experiences
in rich media and business applications targeted for the Web, desktop, and mobile
devices when online or offline. It is a free plug-in powered by the .NET framework
that is compatible across multiple browsers, devices and operating systems.
Silverlight supports advanced data integration, multithreading, HD video using IIS
Smooth Streaming, and built in content protection. You also have access to unique
capabilities such as Deep Zoom and Pivot for interactive and data visualization
requirements. You can build sleek modern UI’s and provide secure interaction with
desktop files, devices, data and applications such as Microsoft Office. With the
release of Silverlight 4, you have an even richer toolset including webcam and microphone,
printing, drag and drop, Out of Browser, WCF RIA Services, clipboard support and
much more. Start experimenting with Silverlight 4 today!
The following SilverlightShow articles will guide you safely through your first
development experiments:
Key Silverlight 4 Features
Capturing the WebCam in Silverlight 4
Silverlight 4 Out of Browser and Elevated Permissions
Silverlight 4 Desktop Drag and Drop
Silverlight 4 How to Command Control
Advanced printing in Silverlight 4
Line of Business Application Series
The primary tools to develop and design Silverlight applications are Visual Studio,
code editor and debugger with extensive capabilities, and Expression Blend,
the interactive design tool. This A-team of tools is Windows only.
Visual Studio 2010:
Silverlight 4 is only compatible with Visual Studio 2010 and you can try out the full version free
for 90 days. After 30 days, you must register the product to obtain
a free key which extends your trial an additional 60 days. Visual Studio 2010 does
support multi-targeting, so you can also do development with Silverlight 3. You
may also use the
Visual Studio 2010 Express edition, which is a light-weight version of Visual
Studio and which can be installed trough the Web Platform Installer for free.
In some installation tutorials, the express edition is simply referenced as Visual
Web Developer 2010 Express, which is included in Visual Studio 2010 Express.
Expression Blend 4:
Expression Blend is part of
Expression Studio. You can download and use Expression Blend 4 60 days for free.
What does Expression Studio include?
Expression Web is a development tool for building standards-based Web sites.
It includes SuperPreview, which enables you to debug your web pages in multiple
browsers.
Expression Design is a companion tool for Expression Blend and Expression
Web enabling you to do professional illustration and graphic design.
Expression Blend is, as you already know, an interactive design tool for
creating engaging Silverlight and WPF applications and your best friend, when experimenting
with Silverlight design, interaction and animation concepts. Expression Blend also
offers a concept called behaviors, which enable you to rapidly add rich interactivity
to the UI without writing any code. You can find an overview in the Behaviors and Triggers in Silverlight 3 SilverlightShow
article.
SketchFlow is a sketching and prototyping tool with flow diagram, sample
data, interactive review, in context feedback and documentation support. SketchFlow
is a part of Expression Blend. Do not miss the Sketching and Prototyping with Blend article on SilverlightShow
when you try out SketchFlow.
Expression Encoder is a tool for encoding, editing and publishing video
content. It can also be use for screen capture purposes to produce training/support
material.
Silverlight 4 Tools
If you have already Visual Studio 2010 installed, you can download the Silverlight
Tools from the Microsoft Download Center. The download package is an add-on for Visual Studio 2010 to
provide tooling for Microsoft Silverlight 4 and RIA Services. The download includes
the Silverlight 4 SDK, the Silverlight 4 developer runtime, Silverlight 4 tools
for Visual Studio 2010 and WCF RIA Services for Silverlight 4.
To simplify the installation, you can also use the Web Platform Installer (Web PI), which will outline all
the required downloads you need. This is especially useful, if you plan to use Visual
Web Developer 2010 Express. The
Silverlight Toolkit and WCF RIA Services Toolkit are separate downloads, which
will be listed by the Web Platform Installer.
You can find out more about WCF RIA Services in these two SilverlightShow articles:
WCF RIA Services Series and Building N-Tier business applications with .NET RIA Services Series.
Adam Kinney has set up a Step by Step guide to installing Visual Studio 2010, Expression
Blend 4 RC and accompanying Silverlight Tools.
There are various Silverlight related tools and libraries available on Codeplex,
which can help you build Silverlight application easier and better. This section
includes a list of various tools and libraries, which can speed up, enrich and inspire
your development and design experience with Silverlight. Most of the libraries have
been updated to Silverlight 4.
Silverlight Toolkit (a product of the Microsoft Silverlight Product team)
The Silverlight Toolkit
is a collection of Silverlight controls, components and utilities made available
outside the normal Silverlight release cycle. It includes full open source code,
unit tests, samples and documentation for over 26 new controls covering charting,
styling, layout, and user input. The Silverlight toolkit has been updated for Silverlight
4.
MVVM Light Toolkit
The MVVM Light Toolkit
by Laurent Bugnion is a set
of components helping people to get started in the “Model - View - View Model” pattern
in Silverlight and WPF. It is a light and pragmatic framework that contains only
the essential components needed.
The toolkit helps you to separate your View from your Model so that you can build
loosely-coupled applications that have better maintainability, extensibility, testability
and blendability features, which simply stands for the design-development workflow.
There are various MVVM frameworks out there; you may prefer to use a different one.
We have listed especially this framework as it is very well documented from installation
up to creating your first MVVM app in Expression Blend and Visual Studio, whether
it is targeting the web or the Windows Phone 7 Series.
To check out the concept behind MVVM and how to apply it in your Silverlight applications,
you can take a look at the Data Driven Applications with MVVM Series on SilverlightShow.
Prism - Patterns & Practices: Composite WPF and Silverlight
If you are building enterprise applications, the Composite Client Application Guidance will help you to more
easily build modular Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and Silverlight client
applications and utilize specific design patterns.
MEF – Managed Extensibility Framework
The Managed Extensibility Framework
(MEF) is a new library in .NET Framework 4. This library simplifies the
design of extensible applications and components. Before you go on a MEF test drive,
why not check out the Introduction to Managed Extensibility Framework with Silverlight
4.0 SilverlightShow article?
Microsoft Silverlight Media Framework
Microsoft's open source Silverlight
Media Framework enables developers to quickly deploy a robust, scalable,
customizable media player for IIS Smooth Streaming delivery.
Microsoft Silverlight Analytics Framework
The Silverlight Analytics Framework
is an extensive web analytics framework, which supports out of browser scenarios,
offline scenarios, multiple analytics services, support for designers in Expression
Blend, A/B Testing, SketchFlow prototypes and logging of video experiences with
the Microsoft Silverlight Media Framework.
Silverlight SDK for Bing
The Silverlight SDK for Bing
provides a working sample control for the consumption of Microsoft Bing search results.
ESRI ArcGIS Silverlight Toolkit
The ESRI ArcGIS Silverlight
Toolkit SDK is an extension of the ArcGIS API for Microsoft Silverlight/WPF, which you
need to download to build a complete web mapping application. This toolkit includes
a number of controls, widgets and tools that you can use to enhance your web applications.
Physics Helper for Silverlight, WPF, Blend, and Farseer
If you are planning to create games with Silverlight, the Physics Helper for Silverlight, WPF, Blend and Farseer will
be a great timesaver for you. It contains several Behaviors and controls which allow
you to draw objects in Expression Blend 3, and have those objects translated directly
into Physics objects using the Farseer Physics Engine.
WriteableBitmapEx
WriteableBitmap allows the direct manipulation of a bitmap and could be used to
generate fast procedural images by drawing directly to a bitmap, however its API
is minimalistic. The
WriteableBitmapEx library extends the existing API with fast 2D drawing
functionality, conversion methods and functions to combine (blit) WriteableBitmaps.
If you are planning to work on graphically rich applications, you should definitely
check out this library.
SLARToolkit – Silverlight Augmented Reality Toolkit
SLARToolkit is a
flexible Augmented Reality library for Silverlight with the aim to make real time
Augmented Reality applications with Silverlight as easy and fast as possible. It
can be used with the Webcam API that was introduced in Silverlight 4 or with any
other CaptureSource or a WriteableBitmap.
Artefact Animator
Artefact Animator
provides an easy to use framework for procedural time-based animations in Silverlight
and WPF.
Silverlight Spy by
Koen Zwikstra (Silverlight MVP)
Silverlight Spy
is a runtime inspector tool providing unprecedented access to all aspects of any
Silverlight application. You can explore the UI element tree, monitor events, extract
XAML, and interactively execute DLR code, view statistics etc.
Shazzam by Walt Ritscher
(Client App Dev MVP)
Shazzam is a WPF/Silverlight
Pixel Shader Utility. The tool is a code generator and also creates a customizable
test page and significantly reduces the time to create and add pixel shaders to
your Silverlight application.
.NET Reflector
.NET
Reflector, available by Red Gate Software, can be used to explore and analyze
compiled .NET assemblies. You can view the assemblies in C#, Visual Basic, and IL.
.NET Reflector v6 is free, whereas .NET Reflector Pro has a price of $195 at the
moment. .NET Reflector was originally created by Lutz Roeder, who is a Microsoft Software architect working
on Silverlight and Expression; .NET Reflector was acquired by Red Gate Software
in 2008.
Silverlight.Net
The Silverlight.NET is
the official go-to Silverlight community site. The website features How-To videos,
Hands on Labs, Silverlight focused blog feeds. The site also has a special section
for community project samples, for Silverlight project showcases as well as user
forums.
Silverlight 4 Training Course on Channel 9
The training
course includes videos of new Silverlight 4’s new features (Webcam, Drag
and Drop, Printing, Rich Text, Out of Browser, Elevated Trust applications etc.)
and Business Apps with Silverlight 4 (WCF RIA Services, MVVM, Data binding, MEF,
and Validation etc.).
You can also download this Silverlight 4 Training series, including a whitepaper listing
all of the new Silverlight 4 features, several hands-on-labs that explain the features,
and an 8 unit course for building business applications with Silverlight 4.
SilverlightTV by John Papa
To catch the inside scoop on Silverlight, you need to watch Silverlight TV. The shows include exclusive interviews with
the Silverlight product team, interviews with community leaders plus bits and pieces
of the latest action in the Silverlight Universe.
SilverlightCream by Wynapse
SilverlightCream is an awesome collection of up-to-date Silverlight content.
Almost every day it provides you with new links to Silverlight applications, code
samples, games, tutorials and resources produced and hosted by the Silverlight community.
Project Rosetta by Adam Kinney
If you are already experienced in Flash, you may want to check out Project Rosetta’s Flash to Silverlight section, which provides
tutorials on relating Flash concepts to Silverlight.
Design Toolbox - .toolbox
If you are more into the design aspects of Silverlight or want to improve design
skills, .toolbox
is an innovative and fun online learning experience. The site provides videos, samples
and exercises on design concept and the fundamentals of creating Silverlight applications
using the Expression Studio Tools.
Scott Guthrie: great
tutorials and source of breaking news
Jesse Liberty: Silverlight
and Windows Phone 7 programming content by the Silverlight Geek
Tim Heuer: detailed articles
and samples on anything Silverlight
Adam Kinney: articles
and samples on Expression Tools and design in Silverlight
John Papa: catch the inside scoop
on Silverlight with Silverlight TV
Pete Brown: Windows Client Developer
content (WPF, Silverlight, Windows 7, Windows Phone, C++)
Nikhil Khotari: articles and
samples on WCF RIA Services
Jose
Fajardo: articles on user experience and design
Andy Beaulieu: articles
and samples on Silverlight game development and physics
Sparkling Client:
podcast about Silverlight and other RIA technologies.
Twitter Lists
@John_Papa/silverlightmvp:
All of the Silverlight MVPs & Community Leads
@John_Papa/msftsilverlight:
Microsoft Silverlight'ers
@adkinn/flash-and-silverlight:
designers and developers with skills using both Flash and Silverlight
@adkinn/expressionblend:
Tweeps with Expression Blend skills
You can use these Twitter lists to find many interesting tweeps from the Silverlight
community.
SilverlightShow offers numerous programming articles on key Silverlight topics.
You will definitely find lots of interesting content once you dig into the entire
articles collection on SilverlightShow. Here are a few more links to recently published
series:
Corporate Web applications Series
WP7: Windows Phone 7 Series
Internationalization/Globalization in Silverlight Series
Leveraging the ASP.NET Membership in Silverlight
The show must go on …
Do not forget your daily dose of Silverlight news on SilverlightShow. To stay tuned with the latest news, updates
and articles available subscribe to the SilverlightShow RSS feed and follow @silverlightshow on Twitter.