SilverlightShow: Silverlight Community

Sharing Blend Workspace Settings

editorial@silverlightshow.net ( Silverlight Show) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 11:10:00 +0200

In this post Andy Beaulieu explains how to share Workspace settings across multiple users in Blend.

For example, you may have set up the perfect Workspace for completing a task, and want to share this with other users in your team. While Blend does not support this natively, we can hack around a bit to get a Workspace copied to another machine.

Exploring Silverlight 4: Printing in Silverlight 4

editorial@silverlightshow.net ( Silverlight Show) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:48:00 +0200

Gill Cleeren is really happy that Silverlight 4 now brings real printing to the table and is impatient to try it.

All printing is done using the PrintDocument class. In it’s PrintPage event, we can specify what content needs to be printed. This can be the entire screen, a control that’s part of the visual tree or even a control that’s generated on the fly. Finally, we use the Print() method to perform the actual printing of the document.

Silverlight 4 Drag From Desktop

editorial@silverlightshow.net ( Silverlight Show) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:26:00 +0200

In this video Michael Wolf demonstrates how Silverlight 4 supports drag and drop from the desktop to both the web and out of browser.

Whats great too is how similar the process is to WPF, the object properties are exactly the same, the only difference is 1 line in the actual file opening. Thus by sharing a common code, you can leverage this functionality in a full desktop experince as well as a silverlight experience with the exact same code.

Silverlight Bridge - A Silverlight 4 File Manager

editorial@silverlightshow.net ( Silverlight Show) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:11:00 +0200

Michael Washington and his team have released Silverlight Bridge - a Silverlight 4 file manager.

Silverlight Bridge can run in "Out Of Browser" mode and access the local file system and allow dragging and dropping of files from the local file system to the server.

Silverlight 3 & 4 Library Sharing with .NET 4.0 Library or WPF

editorial@silverlightshow.net ( Silverlight Show) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:56:00 +0200

Karl Shifflett announces that Silverlight 3 & 4 Library assemblies can now be referenced and used in .NET 4.0 applications.

Your Silverlight Library can’t have any “Silverlight specific” code in it. I have been able to share my own framework code (Ocean) and business entities without any issues.
Now that Silverlight 4 has shipped and IDataErrorInfo has been added this enables entity sharing between Silverlight and WPF much easier since you no longer have to implement this interface youself just to get code compatibility with your business objects.

Building Amazing Business Applications with Silverlight 4, RIA Services and Visual Studio 2010

editorial@silverlightshow.net ( Silverlight Show) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:42:00 +0200

Check out this demo which Brad Abrams presented at PDC09 on how to build a Business Application in Silverlight with .NET RIA Services. It covers the query support, validating update, authorization and personalization as well as all the great new support in VS2010.

I am starting off with the new Business Application Template that gets installed with RIA Services. This new template includes:

Pattern for page navigation

Log\Logout and new user registration support

Localizable

User settings

Shared Code

BrowserFlow Sample from PDC 2009

editorial@silverlightshow.net ( Silverlight Show) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:28:00 +0200

Joe Stegman published the source to the BrowserFlow sample he showed at PDC 2009 but it requires Silverlight 4 Beta.

The demo shows the following new Silverlight 4 features:

WebBrowser Control

HTMLBrush

Application Library Caching – November 2009 Silverlight Toolkit

editorial@silverlightshow.net ( Silverlight Show) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:12:00 +0200

Jeff Wilcox announces that he and his team decided to include, free of charge, application library cache support in the November 2009 release of the Silverlight Toolkit for Microsoft Silverlight 3 and also a preview supporting the new Silverlight 4 Beta.

One of the many ways that we continue to deliver high-value in our open source set of goodies for Silverlight developers. Kidding aside, yes, you can finally enable library caching when using the latest release. Since our installations are always side-by-side friendly, you should get this support immediately after installing the latest release that pairs with your Silverlight development environment.

Dynamic Module Loading with Silverlight Navigation Using Prism

editorial@silverlightshow.net ( Silverlight Show) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:00:00 +0200

In this post Jeremy Likness covers a lot of material - Prism and Silverlight, Dynamic Modules, Navigation...

I started a project to update my personal website using Silverlight. The goal is to use Prism/Composite Application Guidance to build out a nice site that demonstrates some Silverlight capabilities and make the source code available as a reference. One of the first pieces I chose to tackle was ensuring I could facilitate deep linking using Silverlight navigation and still take advantage of dynamic module loading using the Prism framework.

BusyIndicator: David Poll’s ActivityControl is Now in the Silverlight Toolkit November 2009 Release

editorial@silverlightshow.net ( Silverlight Show) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 08:51:00 +0200

Jeff Wilcox discusses one new control called BusyIndicator that is included in the November 2009 release of the Silverlight Toolkit.

Microsoft Program Manager David Poll is passionate about improving rich Internet application experiences involving data, and he previously blogged about his nice ActivityControl (here and here). The control is designer to provide a visual hint to users when an asynchronous update operation is going on – the type that can’t be interrupted.

TrustedApp Sample from PDC 2009

editorial@silverlightshow.net ( Silverlight Show) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 08:36:00 +0200

Joe Stegman has published the source to the TrustedApp media player sample he showed at PDC 2009.

This sample requires the Silverlight 4 Beta which you can find here. This "trusted app" sample uses the new file system APIs, notification window APIs, windowing APIs, WebBrowser control, HTML Brush and Native integration. For Native Integration, this sample will take the current playlist and import/export to/from Excel (assuming Excel is on the system).

Taking the Silverlight Control Browser Sample Out-of-Browser … Plus a Tutorial

editorial@silverlightshow.net ( Silverlight Show) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 08:26:00 +0200

The Silverlight Controls Browser sample app can now be taken out-of-browser. Jeff Wilcox has posted some info on that, plus how to get it done in your own apps.

We’ve enabled Out of Browser support for the Silverlight Control Browser application for the Silverlight Toolkit. That was reason enough for me to blog a little bit about that, and offer an overall guide to how to hook up to the proper events and respond to install state changes. Near the end of the post, I’ve even come up with a more attractive update notification that I hope I can move the samples app to in the future – message boxes are so n – 14 years ago.

Silverlight 4 Beta: Implicit Styles

editorial@silverlightshow.net ( Silverlight Show) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 08:06:00 +0200

In this post Andy Beaulieu talks about the ability to create Implicit Styles with Silverlight 4.

The concept of an implicit style is very simple – you define how you want ALL instances of a control to look in one place (you can then override those styles if you need to).

Silverlight 4 Quick Tip: Styling application

editorial@silverlightshow.net ( Silverlight Show) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 11:57:00 +0200

In this tip Alex Golesh explains how Silverlight 4 supports default styles.

Default styles are styles with TargetType, but without x:Key property set. Those styles will be applied to all controls from corresponding type.

Enabling Validation in Silverlight 4 with IDataErrorInfo

editorial@silverlightshow.net ( Silverlight Show) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 11:43:00 +0200

In this post John Papa discusses on of the new features of Silverlight 4 Beta - the IDataErrorInfo interface.

In Silverlight 3 we throw exceptions when a property value is invalid. The IDataErrorInfo interface has been around in .NET but is new to Silverlight 4 beta. It allows you to invalidate property values without throwing exceptions.

Silverlight 4 Beta – A Guide to the New Features

editorial@silverlightshow.net ( Silverlight Show) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 11:34:00 +0200

Tim Heuer has posted a long but full with useful information guide to the new features of Silverlight 4.

That’s right, we’ve released an early beta of the next version of Silverlight. It’s really amazing to think what the team is accomplishing at the pace they are accomplishing it! Silverlight 3 released just over a year ago and here we are with yet another release full of features that our community has been asking for.
This beta release is a developer release. This means that this is a preview mostly for developers to understand the new features and continue to get feedback.

Data Binding Changes in Silverlight 4

editorial@silverlightshow.net ( Silverlight Show) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 11:20:00 +0200

Shawn Wildermuth's first jump into the new Silverlight 4 bits is to play with the new Data Binding changes.

Prior to Silverlight 4, in order to support data binding, the object had to derive from the FrameworkElement class which left out some key objects including Transformations. Now data binding works on any object that derives from DependencyObject (which is most of the Silverlight 4 framework).

Building ContosoSales - The RIA Services Keynote Demo

editorial@silverlightshow.net ( Silverlight Show) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 10:56:00 +0200

At PDC09 Scott Hanselman presented a demo that highlighted Visual Studio 2010, Silverlight 4, RIA Services, and lots of new tooling that ties all these products together. In this post Jeff Handley wants to show you how to build the same application using installations that are available today.

You’ll need to install Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 if you haven't already. If you have a previous release of RIA Services already installed, you’ll need to uninstall it before proceeding. Please note that you want to keep the Silverlight 3 SDK installed though. While you can only have one Silverlight runtime installed, Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 installs the Silverlight 3 SDK for you and it should remain installed side-by-side with the Silverlight 4 SDK.

Silverlight 4 Beta Is Out - And The Toolkit Has It Covered

editorial@silverlightshow.net ( Silverlight Show) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 10:42:00 +0200

With this post David Anson announces that Silverlight Toolkit November 2009 release is now available for Silverlight 3 and 4.

We've just published the November 09 release of the Silverlight Toolkit in conjunction with today's unveiling of the Silverlight 4 Beta! The Silverlight 4 Beta offers a bunch of neat new features which enable even more compelling online (and offline!) applications. Stuff like bi-directional text, web cam and microphone support, a RichTextArea control, clipboard access, ICommand, an elevated-trust model, printing, notifications, right-click, and more! Of course, the big news for this post is a new version of the Silverlight Toolkit that's perfectly suited for developing great applications on Silverlight 4.

Silverlight 4: New Features Overview

editorial@silverlightshow.net ( Silverlight Show) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 10:24:00 +0200

Alex Golesh has started a series of posts about the new features in Silverlight 4 Beta released at PDC 09. Here are the first few articles:

Silverlight 4 Rough Notes

editorial@silverlightshow.net ( Silverlight Show) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 09:55:00 +0200

These posts of Mike Taulty are put together after a short time with Silverlight 4 as a way of providing pointers to some of the new features that Silverlight 4 has to offer. Here you can find all the post that have been already published:

Discovering Silverlight 4 – What is new?

editorial@silverlightshow.net ( Silverlight Show) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 09:43:00 +0200

VBandi has published the official summary of the new features in Silverlight 4 with some additional explanations.

The painful silence enforced by the NDA is now over, and I can talk about all the cool new stuff on Silverlight 4! To me, the most amazing thing is how much the Silverlight team has been listening to the community. Just take a look at the Top 10 most requested SL4 features at: http://silverlight.uservoice.com/pages/4325-feature-suggestions, and compare it with the whatsnew document - 8 out of the top 10 requests are in the Beta, except for the two where iPhone and other device support is discussed. This is an amazing proof that the Silverlight Team is really customer-driven, congrats!

Accessing Web Camera and Microphone

editorial@silverlightshow.net ( Silverlight Show) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 09:36:00 +0200

Tim Heuer has posted a screencast demonstrating how easy it is to use the webcam and microphone in Silverlight 4.

This video demonstrates how to utilize a user's web camera and microphone attached to their computer via the browser. This demonstrates the basics of the core API for capturing the audio/video.

WPF 4 (VS 2010 and .NET 4.0 Series)

editorial@silverlightshow.net ( Silverlight Show) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 09:19:00 +0200

Scott Guthrie has started a series of blog posts on the upcoming VS 2010 and .NET 4 release and in this one he discusses all the improvements in WPF 4.

WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) is one of the core components of the .NET Framework, and enables developers to build rich, differentiated Windows client applications. WPF 4 includes major productivity, performance and capability improvements – in particular in the areas of Controls, XAML, Text, Graphics, Windows 7 integration (multitouch, taskbar integration, etc), Core Fundamentals, and Deployment. This is the first of several posts I’ll do over the coming months about some of the improvements and new features.

NotificationWindow – Silverlight 4

editorial@silverlightshow.net ( Silverlight Show) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 09:01:00 +0200

In this post of Corey Schuman you will learn some interesting facts around one of the new additions to Silverlight 4 - the NotificationWindow.

This type of window enables you to show a System notification much like when you receive an Outlook new mail notification or a Growl notification in OSX. Since it operates like a system message, this feature is only available in Out of Browser (OOB) scenarios.
This example shows how to instantiate a NotificationWindow, with the resulting application like the below screenshot.