Introducing Silverlight 1.1

Building Applications with Silverlight 1.1

Now it is time to pull all of the concepts, code samples, and Silverlight 1.1 ideas together to build a sample Silverlight application. In this section, two sample Silverlight controls will be built that can be used in any Silverlight 1.1 application: a custom button control and an upload control. These controls will illustrate the concepts covered in this Short Cut and provide more insight into the Silverlight application development process.

Custom Silverlight 1.1 Button Control

Creating a custom Silverlight control involves two basic tasks—defining the visual appearance of the control and providing it with functionality. The UI is primarily defined in XAML markup and the object model is primarily defined in code. Each custom control is described by its API (Application Programming Interface), which exposes public properties, data fields, and events.

The general structure of a custom Silverlight control is a XAML file and a code behind file contained in a Silverlight User Control project.

Every custom Silverlight control must inherit from the .NET Control class, illustrated in Figure 25.

Figure 25. Class hierarchy of .NET Control class

Our XAML file will contain one Rectangle that will determine the boundaries of the control and one TextBlock that will serve as a text holder. The XAML markup for the control can be seen in Example 6.

Example 6. Button ...