USE THE TOOLS AND LANGUAGES YOU ALREADY KNOW AND LOVE. CODE IN VISUAL STUDIO USING JSCRIPT, IRONRUBY, IRONPYTHON, VB.NET, C#.
The Microsoft Visual Studio development system is a suite of development tools designed to aid software developers—whether they are novices or seasoned professionals—face complex challenges and create innovative solutions. It provides features such as efficient code editors, IntelliSense, Wizards, and data designers in one integrated development environment (IDE) to high-end application life-cycle management products in Microsoft Visual Studio Team System. Visual Studio 2008 includes support for XAML editing and building Silverlight projects.
Regardless of your programming language preference, it’s easy to apply your programming skills to developing Silverlight-based applications and media experiences. The Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR) is used to implement dynamic languages like Python and Ruby on the .NET Framework.
ENJOY RAPID DEVELOPMENT WITH XML-BASED DECLARATIVE MARKUP AND A FULL SET OF CONTROLS THAT HAVE PUBLICLY AVAILABLE SOURCE CODE.
Having a full featured set of controls to work with makes applications much easier to build and more responsive to use than AJAX controls. With Silverlight 2, there are many new controls now available, adding richness to the development environment. Here are examples of the new Calendar and Datagrid controls :
The following controls are now available in Silverlight 2:
In addition, we’re also making many more controls available online via CodePlex. These controls are noted above with an (*). Over the next few months we plan to have over 100 controls available for Silverlight.
Silverlight allows controls to be directly connected to data sources, and the control itself can have an item template, which knows how to show each item of data. An example would be a list control, which would have a template to create a calendar and text field for each item. If the user then selects or edits these items, the changes are made directly against the underlying data.
WORK DIRECTLY FROM A DESIGNER’S IMPLEMENTATION OF THE UI BUILT IN BLEND. NO MORE TRYING TO INTERPRET GRAPHICAL MOCK-UPS; JUST OPEN THE BLEND PROJECT DIRECTLY IN VISUAL STUDIO.
With Silverlight, prototypes can easily become real UI, making it quicker to produce branded applications. In the past, a prototype would be produced as a set of bitmaps, and the developer would then have to work hard to then code layout, graphics and animation. Any changes in design were costly, since the designer could not touch the code produced by the developer; and re-writing code is expensive. In Silverlight, the UI is specified by a text based mark-up language, XAML. Designers can create or edit XAML using the graphical tools they’re used to, without needing any code changes.
Our tools have also evolved to support the new roles in producing better-looking applications. Expression Blend shares project format, XAML, and .NET development with Visual Studio for Designer-Developer workflow; and has added support for Silverlight 2. This means that the designer can work on the same project as the developer, and thus requires no re-writing of code or use of exporters or clunky add-ins. It also means that developer practices can be applied to the UI mark-up, such as diff’ing and source control.