C# 2008 Programmer's Reference

Chapter 19. Developing Silverlight Applications

Over the years, we have all seen the proliferation of web applications. In the early days, web sites consisted of sets of static HTML pages with nice graphics and lots of information. Then, server-side technologies like CGI, ASP, and JSP made web applications possible, and suddenly users could do a lot of things on the web, including buying products and making reservations online. Client-side innovations such as JavaScript helped improve the user experience of web applications, making them feel much more responsive. Although AJAX's underlying technologies had been available for several years, it wasn't really until the last couple of years that people really started spending more time AJAX-enabling their web applications. All this boils down to one important goal of web developers — making web applications much more interactive and responsive.

Today, a new term has been coined: RIA — Rich Internet Application. To Microsoft, RIA really stands for Rich Interactive Application. And it was with that in mind that Microsoft recently launched a new technology/product called Silverlight. Previously known as Windows Presentation Foundation/Everywhere (WPF/E), Microsoft Silverlight is a browser plug-in that enables developers to host RIAs that feature animation and vector graphics, as well as video playback.

This chapter will help you get started with Silverlight and provides an opportunity for you to get a feel for how Silverlight development ...