The Silverlight Blog

Silverlight Show: Windows 8 and the future of XAML Part 7: The application lifecycle of Windows 8 applications

Silverlight Team — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 16:20:00 GMT

In the previous articles of this series, we have touched on quite a few important aspects of Windows 8 application development. In part 6, we looked at tiles. We saw that live tiles are a way of allowing your application to displaying up-to-date information to the end-user while it’s not running. A valid question that I often get is: why isn’t the application running? We’ve had the multi-tasking paradigm for many years now and it’s something we as developers take for granted.

Windows 8 breaks with this “tradition”: a new type of application lifecycle is introduced in Windows 8, entirely managed by the operating system itself. However, it has several places where we as developers need to hook into to build great experiences for our users.

In this article, we’ll take a look at the options we have to manage how our application behaves in combination with the new application lifecycle management. We’ll take a look at executing code in the background as well.

The code for this article can be downloaded here.

Silverlight Show: Connecting Windows 8 applications with services: Part 1: Using services to get data in our Windows 8 applications

Silverlight Team — Fri, 17 Aug 2012 15:54:02 GMT

Windows 8’s biggest novelty is without a doubt “Apps”. Microsoft is entering the world of apps and is for the first time introducing a “real marketplace”, named the Windows 8 Store where developers can publish, market and sell their applications. This new (for Microsoft developers at least) way of working requires in many views a change of mindset. We as developers are facing many new things, including a new application lifetime management, a new API (WinRT), a different type of communication between apps (Contracts), a new Start experience (Tiles) and many more.

Since apps are going to be distributed through the means of a store, topics such as accessing data also requires some thought. In many views, accessing data through services is similar to accessing data in Silverlight applications. Although the principles are similar, the implementation tends to differ in many places.

The apps we build need to give the user the feeling of being connected. When we’re building a stock ticker application, the app needs access to up-to-date data. An RSS reader would be pretty useless without access to RSS feeds. A LOB app may need access to a CRM data. Without being connected to (up-to-date) data, many apps can’t even execute their normal routine.

Recording of Part 1 of the Webinar 'Advanced Windows 8 Metro' by Gill Cleeren

Silverlight Team — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 17:35:00 GMT

Watch a recording of Part 1 of the webinar 'Advanced Windows 8 Metro' delivered by Silverlight MVP Gill Cleeren on July 18th, 2012.

Download the slides (.ppt/.pptx) | Get the demos

Join part 2 next Wednesday, July 25 at 10 am PST.

Webinar summary: Windows 8 is just around the corner! As developers, we need to be ready to build Metro style applications. In the last couple of months, we got a lot of information already, although most of it covered the basics. It’s time to move beyond that.
This webinar picks up where the intro talks (see the recordings of earlier webinars on Windows 8) stopped, so expect coverage of topics you may have seen some content about or even none at all!

Windows 8 Metro Apps: The 8 Must-Know Tricks! Day 2

Silverlight Team — Fri, 03 Aug 2012 17:32:00 GMT

This is Day # 2 in the Windows 8 development article series on common tips & tricks towards developing real-world Metro apps. Over the next several weeks, you’ll see 8 articles talk about some must-do things for Windows 8 Metro app developers. Simple & to the point, with some code examples on XAML/C# stack. Here’s the indexed list for the series:

Day 1: Know the ecosystem; Start
Day 2: Layout, Navigation & Visual States
Day 3: Semantic Zoom
Day 4: Controls & Styling
Day 5: Search, Share & Settings Contracts
Day 6: Data Persistence & Application Life-Cycle Management
Day 7: Use of OData or Web Services
Day 8: Live Services integration

Day 2: Layout, Navigation & Visual States

App Layout:

So, you have the next big app idea. The real question is – will it delight the user? All Windows 8 Metro apps should and it is critically important to plan towards it. One curse for us developers is how easy it is to get started with an idea and go File->New Project in Visual Studio. As the Metro design principles stated again & again, let’s sweat the details. Pen & paper can be a wonderful companion to plan out the overall application layout. How will you slice & dice your content? Is the app content going to laid out in an information hierarchy or in a flat system? How would the app support Metro design principles & integrate with the rest of the OS?

Windows 8 Metro Apps: The 8 Must-Know Tricks! Day 1

Silverlight Team — Thu, 02 Aug 2012 17:30:00 GMT

You’re at a chic coffee shop or on a plane. Just like everyone around you, you have a tablet. Watch a movie, play a game, do the social stuff. And then while everyone starts getting bored, you flip part of your tablet and out comes a thin keyboard. May be you are also carrying your Arch Touch mouse .. your thin tablet is now transformed into a decent dev machine that’ll happily run Visual Studio for hours on battery. Non-developers get to use the desktop mode on Intel slates, thus bringing over all the productivity applications from a Windows 7 PC. All the while, the ‘Metro’ side of things stays very touch-friendly and superbly delightful for content consumption.

That, is one of the promises of Windows 8 - the next iteration of the most popular computer OS. Be excited, as this is the biggest & boldest change in Windows since 95 and there is a lot in it for developers. If you are a .NET developer, the programming paradigms in Windows 8 Metro apps should be very interesting, with fragments of it boiling over to other .NET development. XAML devs should feel right at home, as should web folks with strong HTML/JS/CSS skills. Metro apps are fun to write, in my opinion, and there is a huge potential to make a name for yourself when the Windows Store opens with Windows 8.

I have had the superb pleasure of working on several Windows 8 Enterprise LOB Metro apps for proof-of-concept, along with some very talented internal developers/designers. Unfortunately, that also means NDA and not being able to talk about stuff yet. But what I can do is share some coding experiences, since there is a decent learning curve. I will try to keep the articles short for readability & jump into what you need to make your first Windows 8 Metro app.

Introduction to Windows 8 Metro Part 1: Ebook

Silverlight Team — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 17:29:00 GMT

This ebook collects the first 7 parts of SilverlightShow article series 'Windows 8 Metro', together with source code.

In this first part (2 more parts expected to be released, following the development of the series) Andrea introduces the basic concepts of Windows 8 development, and covers developing your first application, the application life-cycle, the new metro controls and more.
From the author: In the recent days an epocal change is becoming evident. If you tried to download the new Windows 8 Consumer Preview, available for free on Microsoft website, you know what I mean. The change, that is greatly focused on a new user experience, is driven by the growing power of portable devices that are becoming prevalent on common desktop and laptops. Up to the day before today, tablet PCs, smartphones, and generically speaking touch-enabled devices was expensive and not effective, but they are now something that common people start to take in serious consideration from the effectiveness perspective and also from the economical point of view.

Recording of Webinar '10 Things Silverlight Developers Should Know About Windows 8' by Michael Crump

Silverlight Team — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 17:25:00 GMT

Watch a recording of the webinar '10 Things Silverlight Developers Should Know About Windows 8' delivered by Silverlight MVP Michael Crump on July 3rd, 2012.

View the webinar slides (.ppt / .pptx) | Get demos | Go to the QandA page

Webinar summary: In this webinar Silverlight MVP Michael Crump will look at how Silverlight developers skills translate over to WinRT. He will dive straight into 10 things that he has discovered while working with WinRT. You will quickly find out just how much you will need to learn to work with this new platform.

Windows 8 Metro: Improve GridView and ListView with SemanticZoom and Incremental Loading

Silverlight Team — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 17:24:00 GMT

In the previous article from this series I've explored the main controls that support the new user experience in metro style applications. GridView, ListView and FlipView are a big help to fully embrace the metro-styled experience and having a deep knowledge about their features is important to develop effective applications. In this number I would want to go for two advanced features I've skipped in the introduction. I'm referring to Semantic Zoom, that is the ability to coordinate the content of two controls to easily explore a collection, and to Incremental Loading that let you load items in chunks when they really need.

Introducing Semantic Zoom

When you think at zooming something, you probably recall to your mind how you zoom a map in google or bing, or probably how you zoom an image or a document.

These kinds of zoom go under the name of "optical" zoom, because you are enlarging your optical view of an element as you were using a lens. If you think at a GridView, or also at a ListView, you easily understand that optical zoom cannot be applied just because it does have a real importance. What you can try to zoom instead, are the groups you defined for your view. In the case you have a number of items in your grid it may be difficult to scroll and scroll just to reach the item you are searching for, but probably you know what is the group it belongs to, so you can zoom out to the groups, select the group and then zoom in again to the items in the group. This is the so-called semantic zoom, a zoom that does not imply an optical enlargement but that is based on the semantic of your grouping.

Recording of Webinar 'Prism and WCF RIA Services' by Brian Noyes

Silverlight Team — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 17:21:00 GMT

Watch a recording of the webinar 'Prism and WCF RIA Services - Two Great Toolkits That Work Great Together' delivered by Silverlight MVP Brian Noyes on May 30th, 2012.

Download the slides | Get the demos | Go to the Q&A page

Webinar summary: In this webinar Silverlight MVP Brian Noyes will give a quick overview of what Prism is and what its feature set includes. He'll do a very quick review of what WCF RIA Services does,and will focus on how you can build a Silverlight Prism application and factor your functionality into modules while still making the RIA Services functionality available in multiple modules. Attendees will find out how to leverage the Repository pattern to pull all the RIA Services client side code into one place, expose the data from a Repository service that you can then pull into any scope in the application that wants to consume it.
As usual, we had a free ebook giveaway for the attendees and tweeters of this webinar:

Windows 8 Metro: Asynchrony made easy

Silverlight Team — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 17:20:00 GMT

After the birth of Silverlight the developers have had to deal with asynchronous programming much more than before. The responsiveness of the user interface has always been an important matter and asynchronous programming has been the right response also before than Silverlight, in Windows Forms and WPF. But for the first time, Silverlight made a strict request by the framework to run a lot of tasks asynchronous. Due to architectural choices, all the calls to the network API had to be made in an async way, and this caused a number of headaches to developers that for the very first time couldn't forget about asynchronicity paying the price of a bad user experience.

In metro-style applications, the concept of "make it asynchronous" is exploded to the extreme consequences. WinRT, the underlying wrapper for Windows API, request to run asynchronously most of the tasks, with the rule that, if it may run longer than 50 milliseconds, then it has to be asynchronous. Calling the network, using a device, grabbing a photo from the camera, all these actions are asynchronous in metro-style applications but, async is hidden also behind simpler tasks like opening a message box.

All this surfeit of asynchronous, promises to make programmer's life a hell. Luckily, the .NET framework 4.5 introduces a set of tools to the rescue, making asynchronous simpler as drinking a glass of water.

The pitfall of asynchronous programming

Just before diving in the new asynchronous model in metro-style applications, it is required we make a step behind and remember why asynchronous is so boring to people. The problem here is matter of context. When you call a synchronous task, all your code runs in a unitary context so, after the task ended, you are in the same context and you can continue the work without any trouble. Differently, an asynchronous task requires a context switch, from a base flow that continues to run, to another flow for the spanned task. So when the asynchronous task ends, your original context has been lost. Let me make a practical example. Let say you have to call a web service to get the list of products for a specific season, and with the result you have to fill an existing Catalog instance; in a synchronous world you will write this code:

Creating SilverlightShow Windows Phone App: Ebook

Silverlight Team — Wed, 25 Jul 2012 17:17:00 GMT

This e-book collects the 4 parts of SilverlightShow article series 'Creating the SilverlightShow Windows Phone Application' authored by Peter Kuhn.

From the author: At the end of February, the official SilverlightShow Windows Phone app has been accepted into the Marketplace. The app gives you access to some of the content of this website, including news, articles and events, and is completely free for use (also ad-free!). Some of the convenience features include the possibility to create reminders for upcoming events and webinars directly on your phone, to get notifications about new content in the form of live tiles, and to maintain a local list of favorites that allows you to permanently store items for later reading. If you haven’t checked out the app yet, you can find more details and a quick intro video here, or visit its Marketplace page here.
The creation of the app was an interesting experience, because unlike other phone projects I had worked on in the past, this one wasn’t a greenfield development. Obviously the SilverlightShow portal already existed, had a long-established production infrastructure and already a lot of existing content available.

Windows 8 Metro: Something about application lifecycle

Silverlight Team — Tue, 24 Jul 2012 17:14:00 GMT

Also if currently you are probably running Windows 8 on a virtual machine or luckily on a computer, there is not any doubt that this new operating system and especially the metro-style interface is dedicated to touch enabled devices like tablets. The plans of Microsoft infact include the new WOA keywork where the acronym stands for Windows On ARM that is the aim of making available this interface on a wide set of mobile devices that currently embrace this successful processor architecture.

Running on a tablet does not only imply a different input interface like the touch screen, but also it requires a careful use of system resources that are not always large on this kind of device. This is the reason why metro-style applications have an application lifecycle that is mostly similar to the Windows Phone than of classical desktop apps.

It is matter of life or suspension

As a user, when you start a desktop application, you are exactly aware of the boundaries of its life. You click the icon and the application starts, then you use it and finally you hit the close button and the application closes. There are nothing behind this common process but you, as the final user, are responsible to decide how many applications runs at the same time so the management of system resources is completely up to you. Also if the previous sentence oversimplifies the matter, since behind the scenes the operating system manages system resources in an optimal way, if you continue to open a number of apps, at a given point you reach the maximum of resources available and you get an error.

Windows 8 and the future of XAML Part 6: Tiles, toasts and badges

Silverlight Team — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 17:07:00 GMT

Welcome to part 6 already in this Windows 8 series. Since the goal of this articles is bringing you in touch with all the important aspects of Windows 8 development, we need to dive into tiles.

Tiles are therefore the main topic of this very article. If you’re coming from a Windows Phone 7 background, the concept of tiles is probably already familiar to you. However, Windows 8 brings quite a few new things to the table, including the concept of badges. Toasts are also covered here; conceptually, these already existed in Windows Phone 7 development as well but have been adapted for use in a Windows 8 environment.

The concepts of tiles

In Windows 8, due to the new way application lifetime management, only one application can be running at any point in time (except when the user has two applications side-by-side using snap view; in that case, two applications are running at the same time).

If not running, the application is suspended. We’ll cover the lifetime management in a coming article.

Recording of Webinar 'Contracts and Charms in Windows 8' by Gill Cleeren

Silverlight Team — Fri, 20 Jul 2012 15:53:00 GMT

Watch a recording of the webinar 'Contracts and Charms in Windows 8' delivered by Silverlight MVP Gill Cleeren on April 24th, 2012.

Download the slides

Webinar summary: In Windows 8 Metro, applications don’t communicate directly with each other. The OS has built-in contracts available out-of-the-box which make it possible that applications interact with each other without knowing each other. This way, one application can expose its own data for others to read. Another contract makes it possible to expose a common search functionality from within an application.

Metro style applications – designing for the user

Silverlight Team — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 15:51:18 GMT

It has been months since Windows 8 is available for developers and the need for new applications is growing in a fast pace.

And nothing is more exacting than a computer user in 21^st century. It’s quite difficult to build the right application, moreover – it’s even more difficult to stay on top and not to be, metaphorically, stepped over by the big players. They always know what exactly the user wants and have the resources to provide it to him. But that’s not always what has to happen after all.

You have the power to build what the user wants and even build it so that s/he would feel it so natural to use your Metro application. That is to design the application in a way that using the fingers on the display seems to be a pleasure, but not a challenge.

Okay, let’s make our Metro applications look great!

Designing the Metro application is different from designing the common and straightforward desktop application. Obviously, using fingers on touch instead of mouse cursor is a big difference. And the Metro style applications will soon become the mainstream.

Here you can find design assets for creating great Metro application mock-ups. The download contains layered PhotoShop files representing common controls and components, project layouts and templates.

Workaround for CA0055 Error with Silverlight Projects in Visual Studio 2010

Silverlight Team — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 18:33:00 GMT

This connect bug describes an issue with creating certain types of Silverlight projects in Visual Studio. If you're referencing Silverlight 4 DLLs from a Silverlight 5 project, you may run into this code analysis/FXCop issue yourself if code analysis is part of your process. The core of the problem is a versioning decision in Silverlight 5 which results in compile-time violation due to loading two different versions of mscorlib in the same project. It manifests as the following error:

Error 2 CA0055 : Could not unify the platforms (mscorlib, Version=2.0.5.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=7cec85d7bea7798e, mscorlib, Version=5.0.5.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=7cec85d7bea7798e) for 'MyProject.Silverlight\obj\Debug\MyProject.dll'.

More information on CA0055 may be found on MSDN.

How to Reproduce the Issue … in theory

In theory, all you need to do to reproduce the issue is reference a SL4-targeted DLL from an SL5 application. However, in practice, there are other factors in play. For example, it may matter which mscorlib version gets loaded first.

Windows Phone 7.5 - Using advanced tiles API

Silverlight Team — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 15:43:37 GMT

by Andrea Boschin

There is not any doubt, the first thing you meet when you use Windows Phone are the tiles. These are the large squares on the home screen that identifies some applications and they are also a distinguishable character that make your Windows Phone unique.

As you know for sure, the tiles can be attached or detached from the home screen and some particular software can take advantage of double size tiles. While this is not a feature available to developers, in OS7.5, the tiles gained new features and a new set of APIs that you can use to enrich your applications. As an example you are now able to update your tiles from inside the application and you can use double faced tiles to improve information to the user. In this article I would like to explore these new features and show how to take advantage of them, while porting your software to the new operating system.

Accessing and changing your tile(s)

Once your application is running the user can have pinned its tile on the home screen. If this happened, you can have access to a bunch of tile's properties you can change at every time while the application is running, but please take note that it implies that the tile exists. Obviously, none of these APIs can work if your application is not pinned.

The root of your work is the ShellTile class that gives you access to a collection of ActiveTiles. At the very first place in this collection there is a structure that represents the main tile of your application. Reading the previous paragraph, you can expect this collection is empty when you application has not been pinned, but it is not true. The collection always contains at least one element, and you can update it every time also if the application's tile is not in the home screen. This does not cause a visible change but if the user choose to pin the application at a later time its tile will reflect these changes. The ShellTile class returned by this collection contains an "Update" method that is useful to change the tile's content:

   1: StandardTileData data = new StandardTileData

   2: {

   3:     Title = "My tile!",

   4:     Count = 10,

   5:     BackgroundImage = new Uri("/Background.png", UriKind.RelativeOrAbsolute),

   6:     BackTitle = "This is the back",

   7:     BackContent = "Hallo!",

   8:     BackBackgroundImage = new Uri("/Background.png", UriKind.RelativeOrAbsolute)

   9: };

10:

  11: ShellTile.ActiveTiles.First().Update(data);

The properties of the StandardTileData class reflect the parts of the tile and are divided in two categories: Front and Back. So, we have a "Title" property that reflects the title of the tile on the front side and the "BackTitle" that has the same meaning for the back side. This led to the consideration that in OS 7.5, tiles can have two sides available. It suffice you set the value of one of the "Back" properties and the tile automatically activates the back side on a random schedule.

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Windows 8 and the future of XAML: Part 1: An overview of the Windows 8 platform

Silverlight Team — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 17:02:00 GMT

by Gill Cleeren

Introduction to the series

Welcome to this first part of a whole series on Windows 8 articles, which I’ll be writing over the coming weeks and months. It’s my goal in this series to introduce you to what we know at this point about Windows 8 and how we as (XAML) developers will need to adapt to the new platform.

Since you’re probably a XAML developer like I am, we are going to see things from a XAML point-of-view. In some of the upcoming articles, I’m going to describe you how you can leverage what you already know in XAML when Windows 8 will be ready. I’m also going to spend time looking at how you can convert existing Silverlight applications to Windows 8 Metro apps, so that they follow the rules of the OS. We will also be spending time of course on digging into the developer framework making the development on Windows 8 easy: Windows Runtime or shorter, WinRT. Finally, the series will close with a step-by-step guide on building a complete Windows 8 Metro-style application.

Now in this first part, we’ll focus on Windows 8 itself and the relation to Metro-style apps. We won’t be focusing on the development part yet; I just want to make sure that everyone is on board with the new OS itself as well as being able to place the terms Metro, Metro apps, WinRT etc.

I hope you join me on this trip through the Windows platform of the future.

Small note: in this articles, I try to refer to specific versions as little as possible, since I want the information to stay valid as much as humanly possible when Windows 8 will RTM. Therefore, you won’t find download links in these articles. Doing a small search will get you the downloads you need!

Part 1: An overview of the Windows 8 platform

To be honest, I’m writing this very article in the morning of January 1st, 2012… yes indeed, New Year’s Day 2012. And come to think of it, I couldn’t have chosen a better moment - at the beginning of a new year - to write about one of the biggest things awaiting us in that new year: the launch of a new version of the world’s most widely used operating, Windows 8. (Note that at the time of writing of this article, no announcements have been made by Microsoft on any launch date of the OS, but everyone assumes that we’ll see the OS in its final form on our machines sometime in 2012…). As mentioned, in this first article, I will take you through the most important concepts as well as show you some nice improvements.

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Silverlight Show: 10 Laps around Silverlight 5 (Part 10 of 10)

Silverlight Team — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 19:26:00 GMT

In this article, a discussion about several new features that did not fit in any of the above categories. We will discuss In-Browser HTML, PostScript and Tasks for TPL. Please review the Roadmap for the series before going any further.

The Roadmap for this Series

Included, the Roadmap for the series below as you may want to visit other sections as you learn Silverlight 5. I picked the following features as I thought that you may find them useful in your day-to-day work. If you want a specific topic covered then please leave it in the comments below.

In-Browser HTML

In Silverlight 4, we could use the WebBrowser control only in an “Out-of-Browser” application. This has changed in Silverlight 5 as we can now use the WebBrowser control in the browser (IE). It will however require that you make a few changes to your system. Let’s get started:

1) Update the registry – Locate the following keys:

If you running on a 32 bit machine,

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Silverlight\

and if you are running on a 64-bit machine,

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Silverlight\

change the UpdateConsentMode from a 0 to 1.

2) Sign the XAP File - Right click on the Silverlight application and go to properties. Choose Signing and check the checkbox Sign the .XAP file. Now click on the button Create Test Certificate. Enter any password that you want and hit the OK button. Now click on the More Details button.

Click on the Install Certificate button. Clicking on the button brings up the Certificate Import wizard. Click on the Next button and choose Place all certificates in the following store. Click on the Browse button. This will show you a Certificate Store. Choose Trusted Publisher and finish the wizard. Now repeat the same step to install this certificate in Trusted Root Certification Authorities.

3) Enable Out-of-Browser and Require elevated trust when running in-browser. Right click on the Silverlight application and go to properties. Place a checkmark in Enable Out-of-Browser and Require elevated trust when running in-browser.

Now let’s switch over to the MainPage.xaml and replace the Grid with the following code:

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New Silverlight Show articles: Windows 8 XAML Metro Apps with OData

Silverlight Team — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 17:33:00 GMT

Silverlight Show has two new articles that provide some really interesting info about building Windows 8 XAML Metro Apps with OData written by Samidip Basu (@samidip).

Silverlight Show: 10 Laps around Silverlight 5 (Part 9 of 10)

Silverlight Team — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 16:47:00 GMT

In this article, a discussion of several new features/controls such as Double and Triple click support, PivotViewer and ComboBox Type-Ahead. Please review the Roadmap for the series before going any further.

The Roadmap for this Series

Introduction to SL5 – provides a brief history of Silverlight and relevant links.
Binding - Ancestor Relative Source Binding and Implicit Data Templates.
Graphics - XNA 3D API and Improved Graphics Stack.
Media - Low-Latency Sound using XNA and Remote Control and Media Command (Keys) Support.
Text - Text Tracking and Leading, Linked and Multi-column Text, OpenType Support, Pixel Snapped Text and TextOptions.
Operating System Integration Part 1 - P/Invoke, Multiple Windows and Unrestricted File System Access in Full Trust.
Operating System Integration Part 2 - Default Filename for SaveFileDialog, 64-bit browser support and Power Awareness.
Productivity and Performance - XAML Binding Debugging, Parser Performance Improvements and Multi-core JIT for improved start-up time.
Controls - [This Post] - Double and Triple click support, PivotViewer and ComboBox Type-Ahead.
Other items - In-Browser HTML, PostScript and Tasks for TPL

Double and Triple Click Support

One of the new features in Silverlight 5 is the ability to use Double and Triple Click Support. This functionality will tell you how many times the user has clicked the mouse button. The property is called ClickCount and resides in the MouseButtonEventArgs class. Let’s take a look at how to use this new feature.

Fire up a new Silverlight 5 project and give it any name that you want.

Switch over to the MainPage.xaml.cs and add the following code: (Note: You may not need the MainPage() Method section)

   1: public MainPage()

   2: {

   3:     InitializeComponent();

   4: }

5:

   6: private void textBlock1_MouseLeftButtonDown(object sender, MouseButtonEventArgs e)

   7: {

   8:     textBlock1.Text = e.ClickCount.ToString();

   9: }

Switch back over to the MainPage.xaml and add in the following code replacing the current Grid:

   1: <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Background="White">

   2:       <Border BorderBrush="Black" BorderThickness="1" Margin="52,49,68,74" CornerRadius="10">

   3:           <TextBlock Height="152" HorizontalAlignment="Center" x:Name="textBlock1" Text="0" VerticalAlignment="Center" Width="244" MouseLeftButtonDown="textBlock1_MouseLeftButtonDown" Foreground="#FFFF2E2E" FontSize="96" TextAlignment="Center" />

   4:       </Border>

   5: </Grid>

If we go ahead and run the application then we will see the following application.

Go ahead and begin clicking inside of the border and you will see the number increase. If you wait a few seconds and click again then you will notice that it reset itself. You could easily add If..Then… statements to determine what click count number they are on. This may be helpful for a 35 click Easter egg. :)

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Silverlight 5 Available for Download Today

Silverlight Team — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 19:54:28 GMT

Today, we’re happy to announce the release of Silverlight 5. Silverlight is part of a rich offering of technologies from Microsoft helping developers deliver applications for the web, desktop and mobile devices. Download Silverlight 5, a free plug-in less than 7 MB in size that can be installed in less than 10 seconds.

New features in Silverlight 5 include Hardware Decode of H.264 media, which provides a significant performance improvement with decoding of unprotected content using the GPU; Postscript Vector Printing to improve output quality and file size; and an improved graphics stack with 3D support that uses the XNA API on the Windows platform to gain low-level access to the GPU for drawing vertex shaders and low-level 3D primitives.

In addition, Silverlight 5 extends the ‘Trusted Application’ model to the browser for the first time. These features, when enabled via a group policy registry key and an application certificate, mean users won’t need to leave the browser to perform complex tasks such as multiple window support, full trust support in browser including COM and file system access, in browser HTML hosting within Silverlight, and P/Invoke support for existing native code to be run directly from Silverlight.

For more information, visit the Microsoft Silverlight site. For additional information on support policy, visit Microsoft Silverlight Support Lifecycle Policy.

The Silverlight Team

Silverlight Show: 10 Laps around Silverlight 5 (Part 8 of 10)

Silverlight Team — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 16:24:23 GMT

In this article, a discussion about productivity and performance enhancements in Silverlight 5 including: XAML Binding Debugging, Parser Performance Improvements and Multi-core JIT for improved start-up time. Please review the Roadmap for the series before going any further.

The Roadmap for this Series

Introduction to SL5 – provides a brief history of Silverlight and relevant links.
Binding - Ancestor Relative Source Binding and Implicit Data Templates.
Graphics - XNA 3D API and Improved Graphics Stack.
Media - Low-Latency Sound using XNA and Remote Control and Media Command (Keys) Support.
Text - Text Tracking and Leading, Linked and Multi-column Text, OpenType Support, Pixel Snapped Text and TextOptions.
Operating System Integration Part 1 - P/Invoke, Multiple Windows and Unrestricted File System Access in Full Trust.
Operating System Integration Part 2 - Default Filename for SaveFileDialog, 64-bit browser support and Power Awareness.
Productivity and Performance - [This Post] - XAML Binding Debugging, Parser Performance Improvements and Multi-core JIT for improved start-up time.
Controls - Double and Triple click support, PivotViewer and ComboBox Type-Ahead.
Other items - In-Browser HTML, PostScript and Tasks for TPL

XAML Binding Debugging

XAML Binding Debugging, is one of the most important features in the Silverlight 5. We have all been stuck with Binding expressions at one point or another and wanted an easier way to debug them. Now anywhere that you see a {Binding} expression you can put a break point on it just like your typical C# code. Let’s take a look at a sample:

Fire up a new Silverlight 5 project and give it any name that you want.

Go ahead and add a new class to the project named Podcast.cs and add the following code.

   1: public class Podcast

   2:    {

   3:        public string Description { get; set; }

   4:        public DateTime ReleaseDate { get; set; }

   5:        public Uri Link { get; set; }

6:

   7:        public Podcast(string description, DateTime releasedate, Uri link)

   8:        {

   9:            Description = description;

  10:            ReleaseDate = releasedate;

  11:            Link = link;

  12:        }

  13:    }

Let’s switch back over to the MainPage.xaml.cs and add the following code:

   1: public MainPage()

   2: {

   3:     InitializeComponent();

   4:     Loaded += new RoutedEventHandler(MainPage_Loaded);

   5: }

6:

   7: void MainPage_Loaded(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)

   8: {

   9:     this.DataContext =

  10:         new Podcast("This Developer's Life - Criticism",

  11:             new DateTime(2011, 4, 21),

  12:             new Uri("http://thisdeveloperslife.com/post/2-0-1-criticism", UriKind.Absolute)

  13:             );

14:

  15: }

Switch back over to the MainPage.xaml and add in the following code replacing the current Grid:

   1: <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Background="White">

   2:        <StackPanel Orientation="Vertical">

   3:            <TextBlock Text="{Binding Description}" />

   4:            <TextBlock Name="txtReleaseDate" Text="{Binding ReleaseDate}" />

   5:            <HyperlinkButton Content="Listen to this Episode" NavigateUri="{Binding Lik}" TargetName="_blank" />

   6:        </StackPanel>

   7: </Grid>

While here, go ahead and put a break point on the “Hyperlink" button line, which you can do by clicking outside its margin as shown below:

Notice the Red Circle and the highlighted “Binding” word? The Visual Studio 2010 debugger will stop once the XAML parser hits that line.

Read the full post

Silverlight Show: 10 Laps around Silverlight 5 (Part 7 of 10)

Silverlight Team — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 17:19:31 GMT

In this article, a discussion of a few more operating system integration features in Silverlight 5 including: Default Filename for SaveFileDialog, 64-bit browser support and Power Awareness for Media Applications. Please review the Roadmap for the series before going any further.

The Roadmap for this Series

Introduction to SL5 – provides a brief history of Silverlight and relevant links.
Binding - Ancestor Relative Source Binding and Implicit Data Templates.
Graphics - XNA 3D API and Improved Graphics Stack.
Media - Low-Latency Sound using XNA and Remote Control and Media Command (Keys) Support.
Text - Text Tracking and Leading, Linked and Multi-column Text, OpenType Support, Pixel Snapped Text and TextOptions.
Operating System Integration Part 1 - P/Invoke, Multiple Windows and Unrestricted File System Access in Full Trust.
Operating System Integration Part 2 - [This Post] - Default Filename for SaveFileDialog, 64-bit browser support and Power Awareness.
Productivity and Performance - XAML Binding Debugging, Parser Performance Improvements and Multi-core JIT for improved start-up time.
Controls - Double and Triple click support, PivotViewer and ComboBox Type-Ahead.
Other items - In-Browser HTML, PostScript and Tasks for TPL.

Default Filename for SaveFileDialog

In previous version of Silverlight, you could not specify the default filename for the SaveFileDialog message. In Silverlight 5 you can very easily.

Fire up a new Silverlight 5 project and give it any name that you want. We are going to create a simple application that contains one button and when the user clicks it the SaveFileDialog will appear with a default filename.

Switch over to the MainPage.xaml and add in the following code:

   1: <StackPanel HorizontalAlignment="Center" VerticalAlignment="Center">

   2:         <Button x:Name="btnSaveFile" Content="Save File Dialog" Click="btnSaveFile_Click"/>

   3: </StackPanel>

Let’s switch back over to the MainPage.xaml.cs and add the following code to our button event handler:

   1: private void btnSaveFile_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)

   2:        {

   3:            var saveFileDialog1 = new SaveFileDialog

   4:                                      {

   5:                                          Filter = "JPeg Image|*.jpg|Bitmap Image|*.bmp|Gif Image|*.gif",

   6:                                          DefaultFileName = "YouCanNowHaveADefaultFileName.jpeg"

   7:                                      };

   8:            saveFileDialog1.ShowDialog();

   9:        }

If we run the application now, we will see the following prompt.

Read the full post

Silverlight Show: 10 Laps around Silverlight 5 (Part 6 of 10)

Silverlight Team — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 16:12:12 GMT

In this article, a discussion of several new operating system integration features in Silverlight 5 including: P/Invoke, Multiple Windows and Unrestricted File System Access in Full Trust. Please review the Roadmap for the series before going any further.

The Roadmap for this Series

Introduction to SL5 – provides a brief history of Silverlight and relevant links.
Binding - Ancestor Relative Source Binding and Implicit Data Templates.
Graphics - XNA 3D API and Improved Graphics Stack.
Media - Low-Latency Sound using XNA and Remote Control and Media Command (Keys) Support.
Text - Text Tracking and Leading, Linked and Multi-column Text, OpenType Support, Pixel Snapped Text and TextOptions.
Operating System Integration Part 1 - [This Post] - P/Invoke, Multiple Windows and Unrestricted File System Access in Full Trust.
Operating System Integration Part 2 - Default Filename for SaveFileDialog, 64-bit browser support and Power Awareness.
Productivity and Performance - XAML Binding Debugging, Parser Performance Improvements and Multi-core JIT for improved start-up time.
Controls - Double and Triple click support, PivotViewer and ComboBox Type-Ahead.
Other items - In-Browser HTML, PostScript and Tasks for TPL.

P/Invoke or Platform Invocation

Before we dive into an example. Let’s first answer the question, What is it? Platform Invocation Services, commonly referred to as P/Invoke, is a feature of Common Language Infrastructure implementations, like Microsoft's Common Language Runtime, that enables managed code to call native code.

*Reference to Wiki

This feature is new to Silverlight 5 and we will take a look at how to use it in your own applications.

In order to create a new P/Invoke application in Silverlight 5, we will need to enable “Require elevated trust” in Silverlight 5. We can also use the functionality in-browser or out-of-browser. Let’s begin.

Read the full post

The Silverlight Blog

Silverlight Show: Windows 8 and the future of XAML Part 7: The application lifecycle of Windows 8 applications

Silverlight Show: Connecting Windows 8 applications with services: Part 1: Using services to get data in our Windows 8 applications

Recording of Part 1 of the Webinar 'Advanced Windows 8 Metro' by Gill Cleeren

Windows 8 Metro Apps: The 8 Must-Know Tricks! Day 2

Day 1: Know the ecosystem; Start Day 2: Layout, Navigation & Visual States Day 3: Semantic Zoom Day 4: Controls & Styling Day 5: Search, Share & Settings Contracts Day 6: Data Persistence & Application Life-Cycle Management Day 7: Use of OData or Web Services Day 8: Live Services integration

Day 2: Layout, Navigation & Visual States

Windows 8 Metro Apps: The 8 Must-Know Tricks! Day 1

Introduction to Windows 8 Metro Part 1: Ebook

Recording of Webinar '10 Things Silverlight Developers Should Know About Windows 8' by Michael Crump

Windows 8 Metro: Improve GridView and ListView with SemanticZoom and Incremental Loading

Introducing Semantic Zoom

Recording of Webinar 'Prism and WCF RIA Services' by Brian Noyes

Windows 8 Metro: Asynchrony made easy

The pitfall of asynchronous programming

Creating SilverlightShow Windows Phone App: Ebook

Windows 8 Metro: Something about application lifecycle

It is matter of life or suspension

Windows 8 and the future of XAML Part 6: Tiles, toasts and badges

The concepts of tiles

Recording of Webinar 'Contracts and Charms in Windows 8' by Gill Cleeren

Metro style applications – designing for the user

Okay, let’s make our Metro applications look great!

Workaround for CA0055 Error with Silverlight Projects in Visual Studio 2010

How to Reproduce the Issue … in theory

Windows Phone 7.5 - Using advanced tiles API

Accessing and changing your tile(s)

Windows 8 and the future of XAML: Part 1: An overview of the Windows 8 platform

Introduction to the series

Part 1: An overview of the Windows 8 platform

Silverlight Show: 10 Laps around Silverlight 5 (Part 10 of 10)

The Roadmap for this Series

In-Browser HTML

New Silverlight Show articles: Windows 8 XAML Metro Apps with OData

Silverlight Show: 10 Laps around Silverlight 5 (Part 9 of 10)

The Roadmap for this Series

Double and Triple Click Support

Silverlight 5 Available for Download Today

Silverlight Show: 10 Laps around Silverlight 5 (Part 8 of 10)

The Roadmap for this Series

XAML Binding Debugging

Silverlight Show: 10 Laps around Silverlight 5 (Part 7 of 10)

The Roadmap for this Series

Default Filename for SaveFileDialog

Silverlight Show: 10 Laps around Silverlight 5 (Part 6 of 10)

The Roadmap for this Series

P/Invoke or Platform Invocation

Day 1: Know the ecosystem; Start
Day 2: Layout, Navigation & Visual States
Day 3: Semantic Zoom
Day 4: Controls & Styling
Day 5: Search, Share & Settings Contracts
Day 6: Data Persistence & Application Life-Cycle Management
Day 7: Use of OData or Web Services
Day 8: Live Services integration