From the publisher
Our overarching goal in writing this book was to give ASP.NET developers the power to quickly and easily create visually stunning Internet applications, coupled with rich interactivity to fully immerse the user in a new online experience. Silverlight gives you everything you need to do just this, and in serious style!
As well as taking you through each feature that ships with Silverlight, this book will make sure you're able to debug, troubleshoot, and performance-tune your Silverlight applications, as well as seamlessly hook into your existing ASP.NET architecture and code base.
This book is aimed at .NET developers and architects who want to quickly get up to speed with all that Silverlight 2 has to offer.
As well as covering the breadth of features that Silverlight 2 provides, this book makes a point of demonstrating where necessary how the particular feature can be integrated tightly with the ASP.NET host application. An example is in Chapter 7, where the ASP.NET Profile service is utilized directly from within Silverlight to obtain user-specific data.
It's fair to say that although this book is aimed at ASP.NET developers, it covers all of the salient features of Silverlight 2 to the degree that it's a useful programming resource for developers not using ASP.NET also.
If you're fresh to .NET development, however, you might want to check out a beginning .NET book first, to help you overcome the syntax and set-up queries when learning a new language. Otherwise, take a deep breath and dive in!
This book covers the full feature set of Silverlight 2, diving into each of the subject areas to give depth and breadth coverage. As well as teaching you about the component parts of the Silverlight API, the book also covers debugging, troubleshooting, and performance-tuning your Silverlight applications, arming you with all the skills and knowledge you'll need to create advanced Silverlight-based applications in record time.
Importantly, this book covers the integration points between ASP.NET and Silverlight, taking you through the different techniques you can use to seamlessly augment your existing or new ASP.NET web sites with the power of Silverlight.
If you want to program in Silverlight and potentially use ASP.NET as the host, then this book covers it all.
The book is split into two distinct parts. Part I is titled "Silverlight Fundamentals for ASP.NET Developers," and Part II is titled "Developing ASP.NET Applications with Silverlight." Part I is intended to give you grounding in what Silverlight is as a technology and how it fits into the Web-based landscape. The component pieces of a Silverlight application are also laid out at a high level, and any knowledge required before putting an application together is explained.
Part II is written to give you depth of knowledge across the Silverlight feature-set and show you how to leverage the power of both Silverlight and ASP.NET to create compelling applications.
A brief synopsis of the content follows:
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"Silverlight in a Nutshell"--This will teach you at a high level what Silverlight is and how it can help you deliver engaging, immersive web applications. Differentiating Silverlight from other Web-based technologies is also covered here, and a description of the required development environment is provided. In short, after reading this, you'll be able to describe Silverlight and explain why you'd want to use it and what gives it the edge over the competition.
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"Silverlight Architecture"--Silverlight allows you to rapidly build a well-rounded application with a great user interface, but if you encounter any problems during development, it is going to be important for you to understand the underlying architecture upon which you are developing. This outlines the core features of Silverlight 2 and guides you around the building blocks of this highly flexible framework, paying particular attention throughout to your ASP.NET heritage.
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"XAML Condensed"--Quickly getting up to speed with XAML is what this is all about, helping you brush aside the syntax queries and get to grips with the basics of this multi-purpose declarative language. Hooking the XAML files up to .NET code is also shown here, helping you inject dynamic event-driven actions into your Silverlight UI. Finally, one technique for the dynamic creation of XAML is shown, followed by a tour of Expression Blend.
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"Programming Silverlight"--By the time you get here, you'll be itching to start coding, and code you will as the feature-agnostic programming constructs that make up a Silverlight application are covered in detail. The composition of a Silverlight application is laid bare and its constituent parts explained at length, as well as detailing the Silverlight application lifetime and how to hook into it. The different options for embedding the Silverlight plug-in within your application are covered, followed by a brief overview of JavaScript and its associated DOM. This then leads onto a discussion of the Silverlight Object Model, explaining how the visual tree is constructed to form the UI. Another technique for dynamically creating XAML and adding it to the visual tree is also shown here. Finally, the Silverlight event model, browser interaction, and threading model are covered for you.
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"Creating the User Interface"--You now know how to program Silverlight and how to write XAML. This shows you how to put it all together to start laying out the user interface of your Silverlight application. Each of the layout controls that ship with Silverlight is covered here--Canvas, Grid, StackPanel, and TabControl--including information on when to use which one. Information on how to create a scalable UI is also provided, followed finally by a section that details how to localize your application, the
About the author
Jonathan Swift worked as an Application Development Consultant for Microsoft in the United Kingdom for a number of years and now finds himself managing the team. This means that he spends most of his time traveling around the country helping clients utilize Microsoft developer technologies effectively. Jonathan has been programming for more than 13 years and has worked with numerous technologies, including but not limited to C, C++, Visual Basic, COM, COM+, SQL, ASP, and, of course, all aspects of .NET. As well as programming, Jonathan also spent part of his career working as a Microsoft Trainer, delivering the full suite of Microsoft Official Curriculum courses and specially-designed courses also.
Jonathan tries to keep his blog (http: //blogs.msdn.com/jonathanswift) up to date, but feels that writing a book is a very good excuse for not doing so. (Other popular excuses including playing the XBox and washing his hair.) When he's not working, Jonathan spends all of his time with his wife and kids, and occasionally gets to exercise his pilot's license at the flying club.
Chris Barker works as an Application Development Consultant for Microsoft in the United Kingdom (www.microsoft.com/uk/adc). He spends his days traveling around the country visiting customers and consulting on development practices on the Microsoft platform. More recently, his interest has been captured by RIA development, and as a result, he has delivered several customer workshops on Silverlight. Away from the office, Chris likes to get out and about in his home county of Derbyshire, riding a bike, kicking a football, and sinking a few pints of real ale.
Dan Wahlin (Microsoft Most Valuable Professional for Connected Systems) is a .NET development instructor and architecture consultant at Interface Technical Training (www.interfacett.com). Dan founded the XML for ASP.NET Developers web site (www.xmlforasp.net), which focuses on using ASP.NET, Silverlight, AJAX, and XML Web Services in Microsoft's .NET platform. He's also on the INETA Speaker's Bureau and speaks at several conferences. Dan has authored/co-authored numerous books over the years on .NET technologies with his latest being Professional ASP.NET 3.5 AJAX and Professional Silverlight 2 for ASP.NET Developers. Dan also writes for several online technical newsletters, blogs at http: //weblogs.asp.net/dwahlin, and updates what he's up to from time to time at www.twitter.com/danwahlin. When he's not working with technology, he enjoys sports and writing and recording music to relax a little -- http: //weblogs.asp.net/dwahlin/archive/tags/ Music/default.aspx.
Salvador Alvarez Patuel has been in the industry for more than 13 years. Currently a senior application development consultant (ADC) at Microsoft, helping customers to architect and build complex solutions using Microsoft technologies in the United Kingdom. Salvador has also been delivering multiple technical sessions around EMEA on Windows Mobile development and has been answering questions on many ask-the-experts events. Before joining Microsoft, he was the main technical architect for real-time engines on popular auctions, TV channels, and the gaming industry. He holds a software engineering degree from his native Argentina and a specialization in artificial intelligence. When Salva is not thinking about ones and zeroes, he enjoys climbing, windsurfing, and recently trying to learn how to play golf.
