Wahlin on .NET

Introducing Silverlight 2.0

Dan gives a rundown of the newest features and controls.

• By Dan Wahlin
• 03/18/2008

Silverlight 2.0 provides a way to write C#, VB.NET and even dynamic language code that can run in the browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari) on Windows and Mac machines. It includes a subset of the namespaces and classes found in the .NET 3.5 framework and supports brand-new framework features such as Language Integrated Query (LINQ). Silverlight 2.0 applications can be built using tools such as Expression Blend 2 and Visual Studio 2008.

Microsoft officially announced Silverlight 2.0 at the MIX08 conference in Las Vegas and provided several great demos of what the product is capable of doing. Silverlight talks from MIX08 are available to view online here, with topics ranging from introductory looks at what Silverlight 2.0 offers to interacting with remote data and building custom Silverlight controls. 

A great example of what can be built using Silverlight 2.0 is available at the Hard Rock Memorabilia Web site. The Hard Rock Web site uses a built-in Silverlight 2.0 technology called Deep Zoom to allow users to get a close-up view of historic rock 'n' roll items.

Infragistics also released a nice line of business applications that demonstrates what can be done with Silverlight 2.0. You can view the application and download the code here.

Silverlight 2.0 Controls
Silverlight 1.0 provides a solid framework for displaying media and shapes, animating objects and performing transformations, but it doesn't provide many built-in UI controls aside from the MediaElement and TextBlock controls.

Silverlight 2.0 fills in that gap by adding many standard controls such as TextBox, CheckBox, ListBox and Button; layout controls such as Canvas, StackPanel and Grid; and several other controls such as the Slider, WatermarkTextBox and ScrollViewer. 

An online example that provides a live look at how some of the controls can be used is available here. .NET developers with Windows Forms, ASP.NET or WPF experience will find the controls simple to use, especially since you can drag them from the Visual Studio 2008 Toolbox (see Figure 1). There's certainly a learning curve (as with any new technology), but the rich features available in Silverlight 2.0 make it a worthwhile curve to conquer.

This table describes some of the main controls available in Silverlight 2.0: 

Additional Silverlight Features
In addition to the many controls offered by Silverlight 2.0, several other key features are available. As mentioned earlier, you'll be able to choose between multiple languages when building a Silverlight 2.0 application, which adds to overall productivity. While working with your preferred language, you can still use standard Visual Studio features such as code snippets and IntelliSense. 

Silverlight 2.0 applications can leverage features available in standard ASP.NET or WPF applications such as Web Service proxy objects, the ability to make cross-domain calls to remote URLs (REST/POX calls), support for data binding, centralized definition of control styles, control templates and more.

While I won't provide a complete discussion of the many new features in this article, Microsoft's Scott Guthrie put together a great set of tutorials that walk through Silverlight 2.0 features. I've converted these tutorials into videos that can be viewed, as well, to see the new features in action. View Scott's written tutorials and the associated videos at the links below:

• Part 1: Creating "Hello World" with Silverlight 2 and VS 2008 (Tutorial / Video Tutorial)
• Part 2: Using Layout Management (Tutorial / Video Tutorial)
• Part 3: Using Networking to Retrieve Data and Populate a DataGrid (Tutorial / Video Tutorial)
• Part 4: Using Style Elements to Better Encapsulate Look and Feel (Tutorial / Video Tutorial)
• Part 5: Using the ListBox and DataBinding to Display List Data (Tutorial / Video Tutorial)
• Part 6: Using User Controls to Implement Master/Details Scenarios (Tutorial / Video Tutorial)
• Part 7: Using Templates to Customize Control Look and Feel (Tutorial / Video Tutorial)
• Part 8: Creating a Digg Desktop Version of our Application using WPF (Tutorial / Video Tutorial)

While I plan to continue covering key XAML concepts available in Silverlight 1.0 in upcoming articles, I'll start writing about new Silverlight 2.0 features as well in the near future.