The Official Microsoft Silverlight Site

Sams Teach Yourself Silverlight in 24 Hours, Table of Contents

Community Blogs — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 13:38:59 GMT

I've been working since September 2007 (more or less) on an upcoming Silverlight book titled "Teach Yourself Silverlight in 24 Hours" at Sams. This book will be aimed at beginners with the technology (and maybe even beginners in programming...( read more )...(read more)

Base Classes for User Controls

Community Blogs — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 11:33:43 GMT

I am still working with Siebrand Dijkstra and his people at School Master, BV and they've opened my eyes to another interesting development. In looking at their code, I convinced them that their interface might be better as an Abstract class that...( read more )...(read more)

Silvelright Cream for August 20, 2008 -- #352

Community Blogs — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 04:59:59 GMT

Alex Knight on custom fonts, Adam Kinney with WPF demos, Shawn Wildermuth on Container Editing in Blend, Tim Heuer with Troubleshooting Webcast, Chris Koenig reports Silverlight on Skyfire Richard Costall and Pete McGann with Silverlight Manic Miner Game...( read more )...(read more)

Tip of the Day #30: Fast Sprite Animation in Silverlight

mike.snow — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 23:45:51 GMT

For this tutorial I will be demonstrating how to create a fast, optimized Sprite animation class. In my demo, you will be able to: Increase the speed of the sprites. Increase the count of the sprites. To stress the sprites further, I have added random movement (bouncing off walls), rotational transforms and opacity/transparency shifting. Run this application now by clicking on this link: http://silverlight.services.live.com/invoke/66033/Fast%20Sprites/iframe.html . If you increase the speed and the...(read more)

Tip of the Day #30: Fast Sprite Animation in Silverlight

Microsoft Weblogs — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 23:45:51 GMT

Troubleshooting data/service access in Silverlight

Method ~ of ~ failed by Tim Heuer — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 20:54:21 GMT

A while back I pondered doing a “live” debug session with people who were/are working with Silverlight 2 and data access via services, etc. I really like a live concept because it allows people to ask real questions and feels more conversational than Read More......(read more)

Troubleshooting data/service access in Silverlight

Microsoft Weblogs — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 20:54:21 GMT

Blend Container Editing

Community Blogs — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 15:17:15 GMT

I love teaching the Silverlight Tour as pretty much every class I teach I learn something new. I get used to certain features of Blend that do what I need but because of some bugs, I have gotten too good at hand-editing my XAML . In my current class ...( read more )...(read more)

Joining IdentityMine (and leaving Siemens)

Community Blogs — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 12:08:57 GMT

These last months have been amongst the most intensive I have ever been in my life. Since my last blog post, I have been extremely busy finishing writing my Silverlight book and starting the editing work. It is well underway, and we will publish later...( read more )...(read more)

Silverlight Cream for August 19, 2008 -- #351

Community Blogs — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 20:53:35 GMT

Martin Mihaylov on Resizing the SL Object, Dan Wahlin on the Grid and a Flyout StackPanel, Robby Ingebretsen with a Particle Generator, Mike Snow on Terrain Part 2, Custom Mouse Cursor, and Transparent Draggable dialog, Mike Taulty with MessageBox(),...( read more )...(read more)

Tip of the Day #29: Creating a Transparent, Draggable Dialog with Rounded Corners

mike.snow — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 19:47:05 GMT

For this tutorial we will step you through the basics of what you need to do to create a dialog that you can: Drag/drop. Add transparency (opacity) to. Round the corners. To preview and run this application please visit this link: http://silverlight.services.live.com/invoke/66033/Border%20Demo/iframe.html . Move any of the sliders as well as mouse left click, hold and drag/drop the dialog. Step 1: Creating a Transparent Dialog with Rounded Corners For the background of the dialog we will use a Border...(read more)

Tip of the Day #29: Creating a Transparent, Draggable Dialog with Rounded Corners

Microsoft Weblogs — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 19:47:05 GMT

Tutorial Feedback – Leave a Comment Why Dontcha?

Microsoft Weblogs — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 16:49:22 GMT

I’m incredibly pleased to say that we have implemented a comments section for each tutorial, just as we do for each video Please leave your comments and I will subscribe to the comments list and try to respond as quickly as possible (if your comment goes...( read more )...(read more)

Deep Fried Bytes Interview - Part 2

Community Blogs — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 07:25:06 GMT

URL : http://deepfriedbytes.com/podcast/episode-10-a-... In this second part of my interview, Keith Elder and Chris Woodruff to talk about all things Silverlight . This episode gets deeper in to the good and bad of Silverlight 2 development today. ©...( read more )...(read more)

Tip of the Day #28: How to Implement a Custom Mouse Cursor

mike.snow — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 18:27:32 GMT

In Tip of the Day #27 we talked about how to change the mouse cursor. But what if you want to have a cursor icon that is not supported by Silverlight? This tutorial will show you how to do it. For a complete demo of this tip visit: http://silverlight.services.live.com/invoke/66033/Custom%20Cursor%20Demo/iframe.html The first thing you will want to do is to hide the mouse cursor at the root level of your Silverlight application. In our Page.xaml, we set the Canvas Mouse to “None”: < UserControl...(read more)

Tip of the Day #28: How to Implement a Custom Mouse Cursor

Microsoft Weblogs — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 18:27:32 GMT

Silverlight Cream for August 18, 2008 -- #350

Community Blogs — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 17:57:26 GMT

Koen Zwikstra updated SLSpy with Reflector, Alan Cobb on sizing the NBCOlympics videos, Page Brooks on a great carousel, Jeff Wilcox with a Unit Testing primer, Jonas Follesø with updated SL/WebCam and Sliding puzzle, Jesse Liberty compares animation...( read more )...(read more)

Terrain Tutorial Part 2 – Using Transform Matrices to Create 3D Looking Terrain.

mike.snow — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 17:45:42 GMT

For this tutorial we will make use of matrix transforms to skew and scale an image in a terrain tile while moving the individual vertices of the terrain tiles. This will give the terrain a 3D look and feel. Make certain to read Part 1 of before reading this tutorial. For a preview of the final app from this tutorial, see: http://silverlight.services.live.com/invoke/66033/Terrain%20Transform/iframe.html . Grab any terrain vertex (black dot) by holding down the left mouse button so that the vertex...(read more)

Terrain Tutorial Part 2 – Using Transform Matrices to Create 3D Looking Terrain.

Microsoft Weblogs — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 17:45:42 GMT

From-To Animation vs. Linear Keyframe

Microsoft Weblogs — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 00:09:52 GMT

In much of the writing about animation in Silverlight, one question that seems to recurs is this: why bother with a linear key-frame animation if it is less intuitive and more complex than a simple from-to animation Let’s back up and examine that...( read more )...(read more)

Why I've been quiet...

Community Blogs — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 23:10:23 GMT

Breaking with a year and a half tradition, my WynApse.com site has been pretty quiet lately. I have kept up with the Silverlight Cream blog posts, but I always feel bad when I don't have much of my own product out there. After MIX this year, Bill...( read more )...(read more)

Silverlight/.NET vs Flash/Flex (or not) and My Silverlight Wishlist

Community Blogs — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 21:58:35 GMT

I was going to present an analogy using different types of cars, but more often than not, the analogy breaks down on some key point or carries some baggage that just doesn’, and folks start picking apart the analogy and assuming it still applies to the...( read more )...(read more)

Silverlight Cream for August 17, 2008 -- #349

Community Blogs — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 15:39:54 GMT

Bill Reiss announced a SL Game contest, Matt Berseth with Custom DataGrid icons, Palard Julien provides password control, Sean Blakemore on IOC and Moq, Somesegar describes the olympics process, Laurence Moroney with a fun app, Scott Barnes on RSS, Tim...( read more )...(read more)

Four Transforms

Microsoft Weblogs — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 13:21:01 GMT

I haven’t really written much about transforms in a long while. We looked at them in depth during the Silverlight 1.0 time frame and then more or less took them for granted ever since. It may be time for a review – perhaps a quick video (it’s on my list...( read more )...(read more)

Visual Thesaurus – Mindware

Microsoft Weblogs — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 12:34:00 GMT

When I wasn’t looking this Website/Mindware got a lot better. Visual Thesaurus is an on-line subscription tool (~$3/month) that you can also buy as a desktop utility, that allows you to put in a word and see its related words visually. I put in play and...( read more )...(read more)