Silverlight Tips

By Robert John Stevens, CEO of WriteExpress Corporation

• View the Silverlight browser penetration at RIA Stats

• Silverlight should overtake asp.net by mid 2011. See asp.net versus Silverlight on Google Insights

• Silverlight .NET RIA Services. This tool simplifies connecting to server side services by creating client-side proxies on your behalf.

Silverlight Installation

• Download and install the Silverlight Toolkit and Silverlight Samples

Silverlight Controls

• There is a very nice Bing Map Control Example at Lynda.com Visual Studio 2010 Exercise Files Chapter 06 Video 05

Silverlight Open Source Projects

• Fantasia

• Search at Free Open Source ASP.NET Applications

• HappyNet eCommerce

Silverlight Tools

• Silverlight Spy

• Fiddler

• Reflector: Browse, analyze, decompile and debug .NET code

Silverlight Dependency Property System Priorities

Because many Silverlight services may try and set a dependency property, Silveright priorities this process from this highest to lowest order:

1. Animiation
2. Local Value
3. Styles
4. Property Value Inheritance
5. Default

Silverlight Panels

Panels are layout containers and have no UI of their own. All panels derive from the Panel base class.

1. StackPanel

   —For stacking elements vertically or horizontally

2. Grid

   —For creating rows and columns. This is the default panel when a XAML file is created.

3. Canvas

   —For arranging children by absolute coordinates. This is perfect for drawing artwork, logos, etc.

4. WrapPanel

   —(in the Silverlight Toolkit as of now). Like the StackPanel but if an item doesn't fit it will move it to the next line

5. DocPanel

   —(in the Silverlight Toolkit as of now)

6. Extensible

   —For creating your own customer panels