1. The Sixth Form College Farnborough Microsoft® Silverlight™ Jim Lyle Data Analyst The Sixth Form College Farnborough Presented at the Sixth Form Colleges’ Forum Information Systems Conference 9 June 2011

2. The Sixth Form College Farnborough Microsoft® Silverlight™  Tools needed to develop with Silverlight  Overview of Silverlight  Advantages of developing with Silverlight  Demonstration (Student Applicant Mapping)  The future of Silverlight Introduction

3. The Sixth Form College Farnborough Microsoft® Silverlight™ Overview of Silverlight (1/3) Description “… a free web-browser plug-in that enables interactive media experiences, rich business applications and immersive mobile apps.”  Cross-platform, cross-browser, cross-device applications  Uses the Microsoft.NET Framework for application development  Applications run in a small (<6MB), free, downloadable run-time  Uses XML-based declarative mark-up language (XAML)

4. The Sixth Form College Farnborough Microsoft® Silverlight™ XAML mark-up C# code-behind Overview of Silverlight (2/3)

5. The Sixth Form College Farnborough Microsoft® Silverlight™ Overview of Silverlight (3/3) Development Silverlight 1 (March 2007) Limited functionality Mainly used for video display Silverlight 2 (March 2008) Huge improvement from Silverlight 1 Many more controls Silverlight 3 (March 2009) Improved support for data-rich business apps Silverlight 4 (April 2010) Further business application improvements Out-of-browser applications Windows Phone 7 development tools Silverlight 5 (Beta) (April 2011) Performance improvements

6. The Sixth Form College Farnborough Microsoft® Silverlight™ Advantages of Silverlight  Rich, interactive applications (RIAs)  Desktop-like performance and visuals  Rich set of ready-made data controls  Applications run in any browser on multiple platforms  Applications run on client machine  Reduced network traffic  Build upon existing.NET knowledge/experience  Easy to deploy applications  Applications can run out-of-browser with elevated trust

7. The Sixth Form College Farnborough Microsoft® Silverlight™ Tools for Silverlight Application Development  Visual Studio 2010  or Visual Web Developer 2010 (free) [www.microsoft.com/express/web]  Silverlight 4 tools for Visual Studio 2010 (free), includes:  Silverlight 4 SDK [www.silverlight.net/getstarted]  WCF RIA Services  Silverlight toolkit (free) [http://silverlight.codeplex.com]  Microsoft Expression Blend 4 (optional)  Part of Microsoft Expression Studio

8. The Sixth Form College Farnborough Microsoft® Silverlight™ Silverlight Demonstration Student Applicant Mapping Provide an interactive, visual representation of new applicant data. To identify whether geographical criteria could be used in the development of the College’s application process. Approximately 50% of new applicant places allocated to Partner and Link (PAL) schools. Remaining 50% of places heavily over-subscribed. Contains Ordnance Survey data © Crown copyright and database right 2010

9. The Sixth Form College Farnborough Microsoft® Silverlight™ Silverlight – The Future  Microsoft support for Silverlight Windows 8 announcement  Silverlight Is available now Works across platform/browsers now Advanced developer tools Faster execution More capabilities?  HTML5 development will require skills in: HTML5 CSS3 JavaScript  Introduction of HTML5