Silverlight is Microsoft's new cross-browser plug-in for delivering richer web experiences to end-users, including video and animations. Silverlight is generating buzz not only inside the traditional Microsoft developer community, but also among designers and web developers who have long relied on other tools such as Macromedia Flash to get their jobs done.
Though Silverlight is still in beta, there's no need to wait. In this Short Cut, Siverlight-insider and Microsoft MVP Shawn Wildermuth introduces you to Silverlight's key features and shows you how to tap into its functionality to spice up your HTML and ASP.NET pages.
You'll begin with the "Why" and "What" of Silverlight," but quickly move on to learn the basics of Silverlight XAML, the mark-up language you'll use to deliver Silverlight content to your web pages. You'll learn about the Silverlight layout model, namespaces, animations and more. You'll see how to host Silverlight on an HTML page, how to handle events and errors, and how to manipulate Silverlight XAML dynamically with JavaScript. You'll learn how to work with prerecorded audio and video as well as streaming media, and how to integrate Silverlight with an ASP.NET project. Finally, you'll get suggestions on where to look for tools, examples and additional documentation.
In short, if you're ready to test-drive Silverlight today, this Short Cut is the perfect tutorial for experienced web developers, and it comes in a single package that's concise, coherent and loaded with sample code.
I am a Microsoft C# MVP and the founder of Wildermuth Consulting Services, LLC, a company that is dedicated to delivering software and training solutions in the Atlanta, Georgia area. I am also a speaker on the INEA Speaker's Bureau and have appeared at several national conferences to speak on a variety of subjects. I am the author of the book "Pragmatic ADO.NET", the upcoming "Prescriptive Data Architectures", both for Addison-Wesley as well as co-author of several certification books for Microsoft Press. I have been writing articles for a number of years for a variety of magazines and websites, including MSDN, MSDN Online, DevSource, The ServerSide .NET, ONDotNet.com and Intel's Rich Client Series. I have enjoyed building data-driven software for more than twenty years.
Nice to see the Silverlight books starting to hit the shelves!
By Lorin Thwaits
from Undisclosed
Comments about oreilly Getting Started with Silverlight:
Just like the name implies, in this doc Shawn Wildermuth, a Microsoft MVP, gives a nice clear-cut overview of how to start playing around with the pieces that make rich graphics happen in Silverlight. A great marriage of XAML and Javascript in your browser.
You can also see first-hand what Silverlight is all about from the guys at Microsoft who are designing it:
http://azgroups.com/uber07
Free all-day event on June 27th, 2007 in Phoenix, AZ. We're leaving the marketing guys behind in Redmond. This is 100% high-quality tech coverage.
