Silverlight 2 Beta 1 provides a rich set of features that enable great RIA (Rich Internet Application) application development. These include:
- WPF UI Framework: Silverlight 2 includes a rich WPF-based UI framework that makes building rich Web applications much easier. In includes a powerful graphics and animation engine, as well as rich support for higher-level UI capabilities like controls, layout management, data-binding, styles, and template skinning. The WPF UI Framework in Silverlight is a compatible subset of the WPF UI Framework features in the full .NET Framework, and enables developers to re-use skills, controls, code and content to build both rich cross browser web applications, as well as rich desktop Windows applications.
- Rich Controls: Silverlight 2 includes a rich set of built-in controls that developers and designers can use to quickly build applications. This upcoming Beta1 release includes core form controls (TextBox, CheckBox, RadioButton, etc), built-in layout management panels (StackPanel, Grid, Panel, etc), common functionality controls (Slider, ScrollViewer, Calendar, DatePicker, etc), and data manipulation controls (DataGrid, ListBox, etc). The built-in controls support a rich control templating model, which enables developers and designers to collaborate together to build highly polished solutions.
Rich Networking Support: Silverlight 2 includes rich networking support. It includes out of the box support for calling REST, WS*/SOAP, POX, RSS, and standard HTTP services. It supports cross domain network access (enabling Silverlight clients to directly access resources and data from resources on the web). Beta1 also includes built-in sockets networking support.
- Rich Base Class Library: Silverlight 2 includes a rich .NET base class library of functionality (collections, IO, generics, threading, globalization, XML, local storage, etc). It includes rich APIs that enable HTML DOM/JavaScript integration with .NET code. It also includes LINQ and LINQ to XML library support (enabling easy transformation and querying of data), as well as local data caching and storage support. The .NET APIs in Silverlight are a compatible subset of the full .NET Framework.
Silverlight 2 In Action: Building A Simple Digg Client
All of the UI in the application is built using Silverlight’s WPF framework. The application uses the Silverlight networking stack and cross-domain access support to query the Digg REST API directly, and uses LINQ and LINQ to XML to query/transform the returned data into DiggStory objects that I databind the UI against:
The entire application is implemented in about 35 lines of C# code and 75 lines of XAML page/user-control markup. It only uses controls and libraries built-into Silverlight.
Tutorials
- Part 1: Creating “Hello World” with Silverlight 2 and VS 2008
- Part 2: Using Layout Management
- Part 3: Using Networking to Retrieve Data and Populate a DataGrid
- Part 4: Using Style Elements to Better Encapsulate Look and Feel
- Part 5: Using the ListBox and DataBinding to Display List Data
- Part 6: Using User Controls to Implement Master/Details Scenarios
- Part 7: Using Templates to Customize Control Look and Feel
- Part 8: Creating a Digg Desktop Version of our Application using WPF
