Silverlight is a cross-platform tool for creating .NET applications for your favorite browser. It competes with and complements other tools such as Flash and Hypertext Markup Language 5 (HTML5). To generate applications you will need a specialized set of tools and a lot of experience. This book will help you get this experience.
The results can be spectacular. With the right technique, your application can be used on desktop and notebook computers, as well as on various portable “istuff” that is either available now or will be in the foreseeable future. There are some advantages to going the Silverlight route. A .NET applications developer can write both client-side and server-side code using the same language and many of the same abstractions and features, like controls, generics, collections, and Language Integrated Query (LINQ). There are other approaches, of course. HTML5 has a broader reach in theory, being compatible with both Microsoft and Apple products, but requires support programs written in other languages. Silverlight (versions 4 and 5) is currently installed on about 75 percent of Internet-connected computers.
This book treats the development of Silverlight applications using the C# language in considerable depth. However, note that it is not an introduction to C# or the mysteries of Microsoft Visual Studio. A programmer will need a firm knowledge of both of these before even thinking about starting a Silverlight project.
There is a lot of material in this book. Following the introduction (chapter 1), chapter 2 introduces Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML). The author considers this language important enough to introduce right at the beginning and in some depth. I don’t consider it quite so important. Chapter 3 is about layout, what you should display on a page, and how to get it there using containers, panels, and grids. The next chapter (4) introduces dependency properties and events, enabling the user to get responses to mouse clicks and the like, while chapter 5 presents a menu of available elements, such as text, images, and buttons.
Chapter 6 covers the application model and treats such things as start-up parameters and exceptions--things that the experienced programmer will have thought about right at the beginning of a project. Chapter 7 discusses navigation through the application, and chapters 8 and 9 introduce various simple shapes and their transformations under various manipulations.
The next several chapters are devoted to advanced features. Chapters 10 and 11 show animation techniques, while chapter 12 adds the bells and whistles. Three- dimensional (3D) techniques appear in chapter 13. Chapters 14 through 16 discuss styles, control, and multithreading. Chapters 17 and 18 present the relationship between the browser and the application and features of “out-of-browser” applications. Some application programmers will never need to read the material in the last five chapters (19 through 23), which cover ASP.NET Web services, data binding, data controls, file access, and networking.
The book is written in a lucid, didactic style. Concepts are supported with code examples and good explanations. There are many figures, including snippets from the Visual Studio screen and views that the application user would see. Each chapter ends with a summary. The code examples and additional code are available for download (http://www.apress.com/9781430234791).
Who should buy this book? Application developers and supervisors who wish to develop applications written in C#. A working Visual Studio 2010 platform is essential. Potential competitive titles include iPhone application development for dummies [1], which is pitched at a lower level, and Programming in Objective-C [2], which focuses mainly on Objective-C.
