Silverlight 2 Unleashed

Laurent Bugnion

SAMS
800 East 96th Street, Indianapolis, Indiana 46290.

Silverlight 2 Unleashed

Copyright © 2009 by Pearson Education, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book shall be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher. No patent liability is assumed with respect to the use of the information contained herein. Although every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this book, the publisher and author assume no responsibility for errors or omissions. Nor is any liability assumed for damages resulting from the use of the information contained herein.

This material may be distributed only subject to the terms and conditions set forth in the Open Publication License, v1.0 or later (the latest version is presently available at http://www.opencontent.org/openpub/).

ISBN-13: 978-0-672-33014-8

ISBN-10: 0-672-330148

                                   Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bugnion, Laurent.
    Silverlight 2.0 unleashed / Laurent Bugnion. - 1st ed.
               p. cm.
    ISBN 978-0-672-33014-8
  1.    Silverlight (Electronic resource) 2. Multimedia systems. 3. User interfaces
(Computer systems) 4. Application software--Development. I. Title.
    QA76.575.B84 2008
    006.7-dc22
                                                                2008040836

Printed in the United States of America

Second Printing February 2009

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Editor-in-Chief
Karen Gettman

Executive Editor
Neil Rowe

Development Editor
Mark Renfrow

Managing Editor
Patrick Kanouse

Project Editor
Mandie Frank

Copy Editor
Geneil Breeze

Indexers
Tim Wright
Brad Herriman

Proofreader
Deborah Williams

Technical Editors
J. Boyd Nolan
Martha Rotter

Publishing Coordinator
Cindy Teeters

Designer
Gary Adair

Compositor
Bronkella Publishing, LLC

Contents at a Glance

Table of Contents

Foreword

There are two undeniable trends in the software development world. The first is toward web style deployment of applications. The web is quickly maturing as an application delivery platform, and increasingly, web applications are seen as the right solution for many styles of applications. The second is toward richness of applications. User experience is becoming increasingly important; consumer-facing applications attracting and retaining users has never been harder and even small usability improvements often make the difference. In business applications, CIOs are realizing that if they can save even a few seconds on every transaction by making employees more effective they can save millions of dollars.

Not surprisingly, Silverlight 2 sits squarely in this sweetspot.

Silverlight 2 is a web application technology. The Silverlight runtime itself is smaller than the average Britney Spears song and is seamless to install on any browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, and so on) and on any platform (Windows, Mac, Linux). Silverlight applications are small and fast to deploy and have zero impact on the client machine. There is no install or uninstall step for Silverlight applications, and all these applications run in a sandbox that ensure they cannot harm user machines or other applications.

Silverlight 2 enables building great user experiences. Through the power of the convergence around video, vector graphics and a powerful developer framework, Silverlight is the ideal platform for UX. Developers have full expressiveness with the power of the CLR under the hood in Silverlight. The C# and VB languages allow developers to be productive today without learning new languages and development tools. The XAML markup allows designers to use Expression and other design tools to build great transitions and animations so that applications look and feel great. All of this together enables Silverlight applications to deliver more productive experiences to end users helping them get their jobs done faster.

This book unleashes Silverlight for you. Laurent not only has a deep understanding of Silverlight, where it is now and where it is going, but he also deeply understands real world programming concerns. This book will make learning Silverlight fun.

I can’t wait to see what you build with it.

Brad Abrams
Product Unit Manager
Microsoft Corporation
http://blogs.msdn.com/brada

September 2008

About the Author

Laurent Bugnion works as a senior software developer and architect in Switzerland, where he lives with his wife, Chi Meei, and his two daughters, Alise (2001) and Laeticia (2004). Originally an electronics engineer from the Engineering School of Yverdon (Switzerland), his interests quickly moved to software, and he achieved a post-graduate degree in software engineering in 1999 in the Engineering School of Rapperswil (Switzerland).

Currently, his interests are very much set on WPF, Silverlight, and other .NET 3.5 technologies, which he helped introduce, teach, and coach at Siemens for the past three years. Prior to that, he first wrote embedded C/C++, and then moved to desktop computers in Java, JavaScript, and eventually .NET (WinForms and ASP.NET). After more than 12 years spent developing various software products at Siemens, Laurent is employed since December 2008 by IdentityMine, one of the world’s leading firms in WPF and Silverlight development and design.

Privately, Laurent has also been active, developing websites and web applications in HTML, JavaScript, CSS, ASP, and currently ASP.NET. He has done his best to contribute to various developers communities, first in the JavaScript newsgroups, and then in Microsoft’s forums related to ASP.NET, C#, WPF, and Silverlight. He blogs regularly on http://blog.galasoft.ch and publishes articles, prototypes, and demos related to the mentioned technologies.

Laurent became a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) in 2007 for ASP.NET and then in 2008 for Client Application Development. In 2008, he also earned an MCTS for Windows Presentation Foundation.

Dedication

How to write this book without your never-ending, ever patient
support, Chi Meei… This was once again a crazy project, and I
couldn’t have done it without your approval and your help. By your
constant support and the energy and dedication you put into shielding
me from the small worries of life, you made this book possible.
I love you.

To Alise and Laeticia, my two princesses. Before you appeared in my
life, I thought I was happy. Now I know something big was missing.
I love you both so much.

Un jour sans danser est un jour perdu
Maurice Béjart

Je ne sais pas ce qui est beau, mais je sais ce que j’aime
et je trouve Ça amplement suffisant.
Boris Vian

Le Poète est semblable au prince des nuées
Qui hante la tempête et se rit de l’archer;
Exilé sur le sol au milieu des huées,
Ses ailes de géant l’empêchent de marcher.
Baudelaire – L’Albatros

Acknowledgments

A book about a to-be-released technology cannot be written without strong support from the community, both within Microsoft and outside it. Making a complete list of all the people who encouraged me and helped me in this daunting task is impossible, but I want to mention and thank some people (and for some of them, friends) explicitly (and in no particular order):

At Microsoft: Scott Guthrie, Tim Sneath, Ian Ellison-Taylor, Brad Abrams, Rob Relyea, Tim Heuer, Adam Kinney, Peter Blois, Unni Ravindranathan, Joe Stegman, Mike Harsh, Karen Corby, Kathy Kam, Corrina Barber, Beatriz Costa, James Clarke, John Gossmann, Karsten Januszewski, Adam Nathan, Christian Schormann, Mark Feinholz, Ted Hu, Jeff Wilcox, Justin Angel, and many others from the Dev Div, for building the stuff my dreams are made of (and for writing about it!). I’ve seen the “new Microsoft” at work, and I like it!

In the Silverlight and WPF community: Josh Smith, Jonathan Russ, Brennon Williams, Karl Shifflett, Marlon Grech, Corrado Cavalli, Grant Hinkson, Nathan Dunlap, Josh Wagoner, Robby Ingebretsen, Kevin Moore, Shawn Wildermuth, Dave Campbell, Jon Galloway, Grant Hinkson, John Papa, and all the WPF Disciples for teaching me all I know (or so it feels).

The team at Sams and especially Neil Rowe, Mark Renfrow, Mandie Frank, and Geneil Breeze for their patience and support for this first-time author.

The whole MVP community and especially the Client Application Development members, for welcoming me and making me feel worth it.

All my friends, online and offline, who had to bear with me being either working on the book or talking about the book or thinking about the book or, you know, sleeping (and probably dreaming about the book).

A very special thanks to Brennon Williams who gave me such invaluable comments and advice; to J. Boyd Nolan for reviewing and editing, and for converting this book’s examples from C# in VB.NET; to Adam Nathan who advised me about the book’s outline before I even started writing it; to Shawn Wildermuth for pulling me out of many a technical hole; to Peter Blois for listening patiently to my bug reports and proposing solutions; to Tim Heuer and Adam Kinney, for clearly showing that Silverlight is more than just a job to them; to all the Silverlight Insiders for the always interesting and often life-saving discussions.

Software engineering is a passion. To all of you whom I learn from everyday, and to whom I try to teach a little through my blog, my site, or in conferences, thank you for making this more than a job: a way of life.

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