Articles filed in category 'Silverlight'

Separation of presentation and data has long been considered a best practice in the development of Web applications.Driven by the need for low friction deployment and a richer user experience, the types and architectures of Web applications are evolving dramatically. With the introduction and growth of AJAX-based applications and Rich Interactive Applications (RIA) using technologies such as Microsoft® Silverlight™, separation of presentation and data is no longer just a... best practice, it is required.See More

WPF is finally gaining momentum, and so is Silverlight.Users are starting to take a serious look at Silverlight as an option for rich applications; some of them even have scenarios where targeting both platforms make sense. The Composite Application Guidance for WPF and Silverlight Applications has received improvements that help developers building either WPF, Silverlight, or both types of composite applications.

In this article, we take a look at what’s involved with building a simple Twitter Search client for Windows Phone. We will cover what tools you need, where to download them, how to design, build and test the app and finally, how to publish it to the Windows Phone Marketplace.

While the development community has accepted the inevitable future of Line-of-Business RIAs and indispensable role of Silverlight in their creation, many of them have started looking for ways to use Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services in Silverlight applications. It is logical: Reporting Services is reasonably capable and the most-used reporting engine on the market. Millions of developers are Reporting Services professionals and of course they would like to continue... using the tool in their RIAs as well.See More

With WPF and Silverlight, Microsoft provides both Windows and Web developers with powerful technologies to create rich, professional, and exciting user experiences.However, in general, developers aren’t graphical designers, leaving most developers wondering how to cope with this new world of designed interfaces and polished user experiences. But fear not! With Expression Blend, Microsoft provides a great tool to create such UIs, and even developers with no graphical tale...nts whatsoever can learn a few techniques that allow for better looking applications.See More

I’d guess that everyone reading this magazine has heard of Silverlight™. I’ll also guess that not everyone has jumped at the opportunity to “play” with something that had been in beta. The good news is that Silverlight 1.0 is now released! I’ve spent a lot of time with Silverlight since Microsoft made the Community Technology Preview version available as WPF/E. The delta between a Web site without Silverlight and a Web site that allows you to experience the wonderfulness... of Silverlight is huge. Before you finish reading this article, I hope you’ll realize how very easy it is to bridge that gap. See More

With the advancement in the Silverlight technology starting with the 1.0 release to 2.0, 3.0, and lately 4.0, Silverlight is loudly saying WOW “Watch Out World.” Can you guess which world I am talking about here? It is the RIAs world! Really WOW!

If you haven't heard, accessibility is one of the most important aspects of a Web site experience.By using the accessibility features in Silverlight™ 2, you can provide the best experience for all users. Building a rich Internet experience can be a daunting task when you have to balance a cool visual design with usability.

Windows Live Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio enables developers to incorporate a set of Windows Live services into their Web sites using Visual Studio and ASP.NET.Using the Contacts ASP.NET Server Control, your users can easily share their contacts between Windows Live and your Web site. With the SilverlightStreamingMediaPlayer ASP.NET Server Control, you can show videos on your Web site from your Silverlight Streaming account with just drag-and-drop. The IDLoginStatus... and IDLoginView ASP.NET Server Controls provide Windows Live ID authentication at your Web site for your users. Microsoft released its second community technology preview (CTP) in December, 2007. You can download this CTP from http://dev.live.com/tools.See More

From the consumer products associated with the MSN Butterfly, the Windows Live Platform has steadily grown and evolved.In this article you will discover some of the history behind the Windows Live Platform and explore where it is heading now and might be destined to go in the future. This article will explore the opportunities for you as a developer in this brave (nearly) new world.

Microsoft® Silverlight™ Streaming by Windows Live™ is a free streaming and application hosting service for delivering rich interactive applications (RIAs) over the Web.In this article I’ll show you how to get started with Silverlight and how to upload your applications and rich media to the Silverlight Streaming Service.

It’s probably one of the most interesting moments to do a post mortem for a Silverlight project. The entire Microsoft ecosystem is boiling around the Silverlight OR HTML 5 debate fueled by the recent PDC and some statements from Microsoft officials. The interesting part about it is that it is a false debate, and like most false debates it will probably lead to nowhere. The simple truth is that Microsoft’s commitment to Silverlight has not changed a bit, and Silverlight i...s more healthy and strong than ever. And the fact that the same Microsoft places an important bet on HTML 5 too can only make me happy as an architect and a developer. Mostly because it assures me I’ll have my fair share of choices in the future without having to leave the development platform I like. The reality is that neither Silverlight/RIA nor HTML 5 will turn out to be the magic to fly us to the land of perfect web apps and, at least for the foreseeable future, there will always be a need for alternatives. That’s why I think the debate on Silverlight or HTML 5 is nonsense in the Microsoft ecosystem. But I digress… Let me tell you about the latest software project I participated in.See More

July August 2008 MVP Corner by Kevin S. Goff

Struggling to grasp the concepts of Model-View-View-Model? Keep it simple!

Rod Paddocks July/August 2007 Editorial Article

The next version of Silverlight should be available by the time you read this article. The Silverlight team has followed a fast pace during the last few years, producing four versions of their framework in only thirty months. Each new version of Silverlight has been full of surprises and useful features. Version 5 is no different. Let’s look as some of the best features available in SL 5

As I am flying back home over the Atlantic, I can’t help but think how much better SharePoint has become after the introduction of .NET 3.5. I have repeatedly insisted that one of the reasons behind SharePoint 2007’s huge success is the application of ASP.NET 2.0 concepts to SharePoint.In this article, I am going to talk about the specific improvements .NET 3.5 has brought to the SharePoint 2007 platform, and how that has made my development life so much better. I will t...alk of three exemplary examples, and in subsequent articles, I will splice each one of these topics in further depth.See More

Silverlight 2 just went RTM. This product is unique because for the first time in the Microsoft world, you have .NET running cross platform, in a secure way, without all the deployment hassles. It has the ability to bring rich UI, right within the browser-much like Flash, but with more capabilities and a .NET heart.So, what does this mean to you-the SharePoint developer? Well, as I elucidated in my previous article, developing rich UIs in SharePoint 2007 isn’t exactly my... idea of a good time! In fact, it is a bit like a 3-year old playing drums on your head all night long while his 7-year old sister is sticking chewing gum in your hair as you are trying to sleep because you have an early morning 7 AM meeting tomorrow in a recessionary economy.Take heart! The thin .NET 3.5 development model makes it all easier.See More

From its earliest beginnings, Silverlight has tried to excite and inspire.Now that Silverlight 3 has shipped, it is time to determine if this is the magical version that every developer should finally take a look at. In this article, I will show you the changes Microsoft has made in hopes of helping you make that decision for your own organization.

Tapping the full potential of RIA applications means involving remote Web services. In this article, I’ll present techniques that demonstrate how to communicate between Silverlight and Live Search using Silverlight’s services infrastructure.

The Silverlight ListBox is much more than you may think. When most people think of a ListBox they typically think of just a simple control that displays rows of text. However, the Silverlight ListBox is one of the most flexible controls you will find. I tend to think of the ListBox as similar to the ASP.NET Repeater control as it too is very flexible. In this article, I will show you six different ways to display data in a Silverlight ListBox.

Most programmers have a hard time making applications that look interesting and fun. We are great at creating functionality that makes the application do exactly what the user wants, but many applications often look very utilitarian. However, with just a few little XAML tricks, you can make your Silverlight or WPF applications look like an artist had a hand in their creation. In this article I will provide you with a couple of very easy XAML tips that you can use right a...way to spice up the images in your Silverlight and WPF applications. See More

Markus Egger discusses the current State of WPF and Silverlight and the overall importance and acceptance of these technologies.

July/August 2008 Editorial

CSLA .NET for Silverlight is a version of CSLA .NET framework specifically written to support development of Silverlight applications.Microsoft's Silverlight is a cross-browser plug-in that uses XAML and a subset of .NET to enable rich client applications across platforms.

Developers of LightSwitch applications are not limited to the set of standard UI controls that come “out of the box.” If your application has specific requirements that are not covered by the standard control set, you can use third-party LightSwitch controls or use regular Silverlight controls (also called “custom controls”) to enhance your UI. In this article I will show you how to get started with custom controls and how to make custom controls and screens work together (interact).

A common requirement in building applications is the need to serialize objects and pass them across tiers between the server and the client. These objects typically hold references to each other, and managing this “graph” and tracking all the changes so that they can be properly persisted to the database can get complicated quickly.

Ready to build a Web experience your users will love? Windows Live Services are the building blocks of your new site. Get started right now with the Windows Live Quick Applications.

Building compelling applications and Web sites just got easier.Microsoft is opening up Windows Live Services to developers everywhere. This edition of CoDe Focus shows you how to use Windows Live Services to draw users to your Web site, get them hooked, and keep them engaged.

As readers of this magazine, you are all experts at certain facets of software development, be it for the desktop, the web, SQL Server and now mobile platforms. Mobile programming was a fairly arcane development arena up until the recent announcement of Windows Phone 7 (WP7). Prior to WP7, you had to become intimately familiar with the myriad platforms and form factors available and write your programs to each of those phones. With the advent of WP7, Microsoft is now con...trolling the hardware capabilities of the phone making it much easier to develop for these platforms. You can now also leverage existing skills in Silverlight and XNA to write your apps. But the question always remains: how do I get started and what is the best way to write for the new WP7? In a previous article, <i>CODE Magazine </i>Jan/Feb 2011, I showed you what to do to get started; now I want to show you the best way to apply what you have learned in that article. I will use Silverlight, the Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM) pattern, and Silverlight Unit testing to build a sample app.See More

Smart phones are constantly evolving to fit your mobile lifestyle. Most modern phones function as full featured music and video players. Windows Phone 7 follows the path blazed by other smart phones, but adds its own twist. Your musical life on this device revolves around the Music + Videos hub. This article contains details on how to interact with the Music hub from your application.

Developing for Windows Phone is easy if you have been doing any XAML at all. That’s because you use Silverlight for Windows Phone development.

In Part 1 of this article you learned how to work with orientation changes on the Windows Phone and how to create horizontally scrolling pages using Panorama and Pivot pages. In Part 2 you’ll see how to interact with some of the built-in applications on the phone through the use of the Launcher and Chooser applications.

ListBoxes suck. Except that statement is not true anymore. Not in WPF and Silverlight anyway, where ListBoxes have evolved from simplistic controls to true workhorse objects. ListBoxes have been around since the beginning of Windows (and other GUIs) and have served a pervasive yet simple purpose, which can be summed up as “show me a list of labels in a list with a scroll bar.” A premise that has its uses but is not sophisticated enough for advanced data presentation, ...which is why developers often use special controls such as “data grids” or “list views” among others. In WPF and Silverlight, however, ListBoxes are so flexible and powerful that they are the first choice for just about anything. In fact, WPF originally shipped without a data grid control since ListBoxes all but eliminated that need. Developer perception, however, was different and the power of the ListBoxes went largely unnoticed. That is reason enough for me to write an article that displays the ease, flexibility, and power of ListBoxes. See More