1. Introduction to Silverlight

2. What is Silverlight?
It’s part of a Microsoft Web platform called Rich Internet Applications (RIA)
There is a service side to this too (RIA services)
It supports multiple operating systems and browsers
It supports multiple devices
It’s a small browser plug-in
It easily plays video and audio (Before HTML 5, this is how Netflix streamed)

3. What is Silverlight Some say it’s a direct competitor to Adobe Flash
Markup is based on WPF XAML (another XML dialect)
It’s designed to improve the Web UI experience

4. Silverlight History (1.0)
Introduced in 2007 was originally called WPF/E (everywhere)
Did not support .NET managed code

5. Silverlight History (1.0)

6. Silverlight History (2.0)
Released in 2008
Supported .NET managed code. (Just another .NET application now)
Based on version 3.5 of the .NET framework
Silverlight now has its own simplified framework class library
UI tools get much more robust

7. Silverlight History (2.0)

8. Silverlight History (3.0)
Released in 2009
Support for 3-D graphics was added
Additional controls added along with improved control formatting

9. Silverlight History (4.0 and 5.0)
Really just a bunch more features
Numerous performance improvements

10. Silverlight Development
Most of what you need is built into Visual Studio
Just create a Silverlight project
You need another download to install the emulator for Windows phone
All Windows phone programming is thru Silverlight
Will not run on servers

11. Silverlight Development

12. Creating a First Silverlight Application
Create a Silverlight application
Host the application in a new Web site
See dialog next screen
This template is only for testing
Note that all current Silverlight versions are supported by Visual Studio

13. Creating a First Silverlight Application

14. What got Created (1)
You get the Silverlight project with one default control
App.xaml and App.xaml.cs contain the application startup code
The file MainPage.xaml and MainPage.xaml contains the main page that will be rendered
You get a test project
The default test page loads the Silverlight control

15. What got Created (2)

16. Instantiating the Control

17. Instantiating the Control (1)
The object element allows the control to be embedded into the Web page
Attributes
The data attribute is not necessary but (for some reason) improves the performance for ‘some’ browsers
The param element named source attribute points to the .xap file
It’s this file that contains the Silverlight control code

18. Instantiating the Control (2)
The param element named onError points to the Javascript code that handles any errors
The minRuntimeVersion parameter describes the minimal runtime version required for the control
The <a> tag allows users to download Silverlight in case it is not already installed
The <iframe> tag is used to fool the Safari browser

19. Template Files Created
You need not usually touch this startup code
The page in the other project contains a test page to host your Silverlight control

20. Introduction to the Silverlight Control
Regarding App.xaml:
We don’t need to touch this much for simple applications
The function App is the Silverlight constructor
Application_UnhandledException is the facility to report the error to the Document Object model

21. Introduction to the Silverlight Control
Regarding MainPage.xaml and MainPage.xaml.cs
These files contain the code for the control itself
The .xaml file contain the markup
The .cs file contains the code

22. Creating the UI
The process is the same as we would see with a desktop application
Use the toolbox to create the UI
It’s XAML instead of a nativ language
Use the Code Editor to create the code behind