Canadian UX Blog

Silverlight 2 Resource

It has been three weeks since we annouced Silverlight 2 at MIX08. Many of you are excited to getting started with Silverlight 2, so I've done some research around and created the following list. I want to give special credits to Adam Kinney, Tim Sneath, Laurence Moroney, and Joshua Allen for creating great tutorials and resource lists for Silverlight 2.

Tools for Building Silverlight 2 Applications

• Silverlight 2 Beta 1 Runtime: Windows, Mac
• Expression Studio 2 Beta: the second release of Expression Studio adds a wealth of new features including support for Microsoft’s new Silverlight technology across all the tools. Enhanced designer developer workflow makes the process of building great user experience even better! You can also just download the individual components here.
• Expression Blend 2.5 Preview: use Expression Blend 2.5 to create and modify managed Silverlight 2-based applications. Expression Blend 2.5 for Silverlight 2 includes all of the features in Expression Blend 2 but has not reached the quality level of Expression Blend 2 for WPF or Silverlight 1 development. Note: here is a clear table view to help you choose which Blend version to use for your project.
• Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition (Standard or above version will do)
• Silverlight Tools Beta 1 for Visual Studio 2008: this package is an add-on to the RTM release of Visual Studio 2008 to provide tooling for Microsoft Silverlight 2 Beta 1. It provides a Silverlight project system for developing Silverlight applications using C# or Visual Basic.  The components included are:
  • Visual Basic and C# Project templates
  • Intellisense and code generators for XAML
  • Debugging of Silverlight applications
  • Web reference support
  • Integration with Expression Blend

    Note: this will also install Silverlight 2 Beta 1, Silverlight 2 SDK Beta 1, KB949325 for Visual Studio 2008.

Tutorials

• Silverlight 2 Fundamentals by Tim Sneath: this lab takes you through the various steps of creating and packaging an application, figuring out layout and controls, all the way through to creating a mini-game using Silverlight 2. It's a good lab to get familiar with XAML, Expression and the new Visual Studio tools.
• Scott Guthrie's Silverlight 2 mini-tutorials: First Look at Silverlight 2, First Look at Using Expression Blend with Silverlight 2
• Silverlight 2 QuickStarts: includes a Silverlight Designer Preview
• Silverlight 2 Hands-on labs by Adam Kinney and Laurence Moroney: More depth tutorials for both Silverlight 2 and Expression Studio 2
• Silverlight Tutorials: the Silverlight Tutorials are designed to tell the story of Silverlight 2 with a high degree of accuracy, as it evolves during the Beta period. It is our goal to provide a compact, readable, intensive immersion into the most important new aspects of Silverlight 2. All of the tutorials (and their source code) will be available on www.Silverlight.NET and each time a tutorial is uploaded it will be announced in Jesse Liberty’s blog. You can also download Jesse’s Vista Gadget to keep up with his Blog and Tips of the day.

Other resources

• Building Rich Internet Applications using Silverlight 2 - MIX session presented by Joe Stegmen and Mike Harsh, Part 1, Part 2
• A Whirlwind Tour - Jesse Liberty's introduction to Silverlight 2
• Breaking Changes in Silverlight 2 - This topic discusses the changes made to the Silverlight runtime and Silverlight tools between the Microsoft Silverlight 1.1 Alpha September Refresh and the MIX 2008 release.
• Packaging and Application Startup - Pete Brown explores the new application model, read Part 1 and Part 2
• Dynamic Animation Lab - This is a simple lawn mowing simulation that exposes different techniques of leveraging the managed Animation API in Silverlight 2.

Demos

• Hard Rock Memorabilia - One of the most talked about demos at MIX08, welcome Deep Zoom!
• Pulse at SXSW - mashes up twitter, del.icio.us, Technorati and flickr in a very visual and useful way
• AOL email client - a full email client written in Silverlight 2
• NBC Olympics - can be seen in the first keynote at MIX08 around 1:17:00, an interview with Perkins Miller is also available
• Financial Demostrator: what the next rich banking application could be
• Taiwan Museum Project: view one of the most famous and longest Chinese paintings using Deep Zoom
• TextGlow - read Word 2007 documents online with Silverlight 2
• Silverlight.net Community Gallery - controls demo, RSS reader, SOAP Weather Widget and more
• Tunnel Trouble - a new Silverlight-based game from Terralever
• WeatherBug - designed for Silverlight Mobile, you can test the app running on the web.

Silverlight Controls

• Control Demo Page - see the controls in action
• Source code and Unit Tests for controls - download the code
• Creating Rich Dynamic User interfaces with Silverlight 2 - MIX session presented by Karen Corby
• Controls Tutorial - Another Jesse Liberty tutorial
• ListBox and ScrollViewer FAQs - all you ever wanted to know about them and more
• File Upload Component - Wilco Bauwer builds a File upload and control and shares the source
• User Controls Lab - Building Reusable Controls in Silverlight 2
• Using the Silverlight 2 Canvas - a screencast by Jesse Liberty
• Using Silverlight 2 Grids and Stack Panels - another great screencast by Jesse Liberty
• Styling Controls - another tutorial by Jesse Liberty (he's been very busy)

Hot Topics in Silverlight 2

Please refer to Adam's blog post for more developer related topics.

Silverlight on Mobile

• Mobile Devices and Microsoft Silverlight - MIX session presented by Amit Chopra and David Kline
• Using Microsoft Silverlight for Creating Rich Mobile User Experiences - MIX session presented by Giorgio Sardo
• Brad Becker interview - about the recent announcement about Silverlight Mobile.
• WeatherBug demo

Deep Zoom

• Applications = Designers + Developers - MIX session presented by Celso Gomes and Kirupa Chinnathambi , Deep Zoom heatured in the second part
• Hard Rock: Behind the Music with Deep Zoom - MIX Session presented by Scott Stanfield
• First Attempt with MultiScaleImage - Mike Taulty shows how to implement control over Deep Zoom, followed by an update
• Deep Zoom Demo - Mike Ormond shares Deep Zoom code and then adds mouse wheel support in part 2
• Deep Zoom Composer Preview
• Deep Zoom Composer Preview - User Guide

Accessibility in Silverlight 2

Accessibility has been something of a weak spot in Silverlight 1.0; with only very basic support for alt tags and default actions.  It hasn't been all bad, since this led developers to use Silverlight with "Plain Old Semantic HTML" in a progressive enhancement pattern -- which will continue to be useful in some scenarios going forward.  But the range of options for accessible development increases substantially with Silverlight 2.