How are markup extensions useful? They provide a hook to perform functionality that would be impossible or overly complicated using traditional approaches such as attached properties or behaviors. One popular use of markup extensions is to provide access to static classes that otherwise are not available...

Jeremy provides a quick walkthrough to demonstrate clean design-time view models. These are view models that provide design-time data for your application, but don’t embed that date in the final product. The release DLL and XAP files will only contain run-time support. Read the full post: Clean Design...

Are you a developer who wonders “How do we test the XAML?” Have you ever handed off XAML to a designer or another developer, who has accidentally removed a data-binding or other critical element, and then handed it back? In this week’s guest blog, Silverlight MVP Jeremy Likness identifies the problems...

Hello Silverlight Community, I am the product manager for Microsoft® Visual Studio® LightSwitch™. Today, we are making Visual Studio LightSwitch Beta 2 publicly available for download. If you are new to Visual Studio LightSwitch Beta 2 here are some resources to get you started: What’s...

If you're building Silverlight 4 applications then you've more than likely heard the term "commanding" used at a talk, in a forum or in talking with a WPF or Silverlight developer. What is commanding and why should you care about it? In a nutshell, it's a mechanism used in the Model-View-ViewModel...

Wondering what all the hype is about MVVM and whether or not you should integrate it into your Silverlight projects? In this post, Dan Wahlin walks through the fundamentals of what the MVVM pattern is and why you should learn more about it. Read full post: Getting Started with the MVVM Pattern in...

Silverlight provides several different options for validating data. In this post, Dan Wahlin focuses on one of the options related to IDataErrorInfo and shows how the interface can be implemented by classes to support validation and allow Silverlight controls to easily display errors. The downloadable...

Microsoft MVP Kunal Chowdhury provides step-by step instruction on how to pin/unpin any Windows application to the Windows 7 taskbar directly from a Silverlight 4 out-of-browser application. Read Full Post: Interoperability with Windows 7 Taskbar using COM @kunal2383 - Kunal Chowdhury, Software Engineer...

OData (Open Data Protocol) is a web protocol for querying and updating data build upon web technologies such as HTTP, AtomPub and JSON. OData can be used to expose and access data from a several types of data sources. This post will show how to expose an OData feed from a SQL Azure data source and access...

Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM) is a pattern that is popular in Silverlight applications because it specifically addresses the power of data-binding and allows for a clean separation between presentation and business logic. There is a common misconception that MVVM is complicated and tough to implement....

Although Silverlight provides a great framework for building Line of Business applications, business processes often require HTML content, SSRS reports or PDF documents to be integrated into an application. In this post you’ll learn about different strategies for integrating external content into...

For me, 2010 will remain in history as the year when Silverlight really went mobile. Sure we had seen some early experiments, but this time Microsoft went full scale: Silverlight is the platform of choice to develop applications on Windows Phone 7. The other available development platform, XNA, is privileged...

By: Loic Le Meur & Marco Kaiser, Seesmic Since 2007, Seesmic has provided desktop clients that allow users to connect to social networks such as Twitter or Facebook. We’re incredibly proud to announce that Seesmic Desktop 2 , built entirely in Silverlight 4, was finally released on September...

By: Nathan Dunlap, Director of UX Integration of IdentityMine, who shares his experience developing for Windows Phone 7 Series using the Silverlight platform. Let’s not waste time, I might as well jump to the obligatory and cliché quote you all know is coming (I will even help make it...

January 2010 saw the launch the new Mass Effect 2 game, and EA Games in the UK wanted to mirror the game innovation with their digital marketing. Developing the world’s first interactive Silverlight banner to be ad-served on the MSN platform was an ideal way to meet this objective. Microsoft Advertising...

by Arturo Toledo , Sr. Product Manager, Silverlight Design Audience A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to visit Europe as part of the Microsoft REMIX Tour 2009 . REMIX is basically the little brother (or sister) event of Microsoft MIX – our annual event in Las Vegas during which we show all...