Understanding Silverlight 2 Beta 2
Basic Concepts of this Rich Interactive Application Platform
Jun 21, 2008
SilverLight is a cross-platform web browser plugin from Microsoft aimed at extending the capability of web applications. It is a subset of Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) which was used in Windows Vista. Some have called Silverlight the "Adobe Flash Killer." Currently Adobe and Microsoft are in a development race to see who can release their "rich interactive application" (RIA) to market the fastest. Silverlight 2 Beta 2 was recently released. It boasts several improvements over Silverlight 1.0 and it maintains a light footprint of a 4.6 MB setup file that completes installation in less than 10 seconds.
New Features
Silverlight 2 Beta 2 now supports a go-live license, allowing for commercial application deployment. It adds support for REST based web-services, ADO.NET Data Services (formerly "Astoria") and is compatible with Silverlight 1.0 applications. New features include sorting on the DataGrid via column headers and a more functional textbox that can now scroll, wrap words and support copy and paste. Deep Zoom technology is also incorporated into Silverlight 2 Beta 2.
With the new control MultiScaleImage, Deep Zoom allows for adaptive image resolutions, allowing very high resolution images to be available but without performance loss. Beta 2 has over 30 built-in controls, compared to just a few in Silverlight 1.0, and according to Steve Guthrie of Microsoft, the final release of Silverlight 2 will include over 100 controls.
Development Tools
To develop with Silverlight 2 Beta 2, use Visual Studio 2008 and Expression Blend 2.5 June 2008 Preview. Studio is the developer's tool for programming Silverlight, while Expression Blend is for designers working on the front-end graphics, animation and video. Visual Studio 2008 also requires Silverlight Tools Beta 2, which allows for integration of Silverlight into ASP.NET applications.
If use of Deep Zoom is of interest, also download and install Deep Zoom Composer, which prepares images for use with this technology. Microsoft's Silverlight web site contains information including video tutorials, whitepapers and "Quickstart" tutorials to get developers and designers up to speed on Silverlight.
XAML Foundation
At the heart of Silverlight is Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML), which was released with .NET 3.0 for Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) technology. XAML, though stricter and more flexible than HTML, is not much more difficult to learn. In Silverlight 2, various languages like C#, VB.NET and javascript can be used along with XAML to handle dynamic content and raise and handle events.
The future of Silverlight is uncertain, but given Microsoft's position in the market, their aggressiveness in developing Silverlight and the platform's integration in the entrenched .NET Framework, it will very likely enjoy extended popularity in the Web 2.0 application development arena.
 |
