A better web is coming [Silverlight 2 is on the way!]
On Friday, Scott Guthrie posted a "first look" at Silverlight 2. My boss, Shawn Burke, followed with a post about his team's involvement. I've already demonstrated my fondness for Silverlight, so now you know what I've been up to recently. :)
My contribution to the Silverlight 2 effort was to write the ListBox control along with its ever-present sidekick, ListBoxItem. Because I needed to support bi-directional scrolling in ListBox, I figured it would be good to add ScrollViewer and its buddy ScrollContentPresenter for consistency with WPF. For people who don't live and breathe API definitions, MSDN offers a ListBox Overview and ScrollViewer Overview that summarize the key points of both controls. (Note: These links are all to the documentation for the WPF controls. Because the Silverlight implementations are subset-compatible, they give a great idea how the Silverlight controls will work, too.) For folks who want a taste of actual Silverlight 2 hotness, I've included an image of these controls being used in very simple scenarios to the right of this text. For images of the Silverlight 2 ListBox (and therefore ScrollViewer) being used in a real-world scenario, have a look at Scott's Silverlight tutorial - particularly part 5 where he introduces the ListBox and shows off some of its coolness.
I've had a lot of fun working on these controls and am planning to blog more about them once the Silverlight 2 beta is publically available. I'm thinking of starting with an FAQ-like document that touches on some of the more interesting implementation details and gives example code for some common scenarios. After that, I'm going to post a few simple applications to demonstrate more complex scenarios. And after that... we'll see how things play out!
Silverlight 2 looks like it will really improve the web experience for everyone - it'll be great to see what customers think once they get their hands on it!
PS - I'll be attending MIX08 next week and would be happy to chat about any of this in person. So if you're going to be in the Las Vegas area and want to get together, send me a note and we'll try to set something up!
