Managing Data and Media in Silverlight 4: A mashup of chapters from Packt's bestselling Silverlight books

Table of Contents

Managing Data and Media in Microsoft Silverlight 4: A mashup of chapters from Packt's bestselling Silverlight books

Credits

About the Contributors

www.PacktPub.com

Support files, eBooks, discount offers and more

Why Subscribe?

Free Access for Packt account holders

Instant Updates on New Packt Books

Preface

What this book covers

What you need for this book

Who this book is for

Conventions

Reader feedback

Customer support

Downloading the example code

Errata

Piracy

Questions

1. Layouts and General Content Organization

Introduction

Fluid layout

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

More info about grid sizing, rows, and columns

When to use fixed and when to use fluid layouts

See also

Creating a navigation pane from scratch

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

Hosting content into specific tabs

How to align header text to left

When to use navigation pane?

See also

Window management and positioning

Getting ready

Title bar controls and window borders - How to do it...

Window sizes and states - How to do it...

Window positioning - How to do it...

Title bar controls and window borders- How it works...

ResizeMode

WindowStyle

Window sizes and states - How it works...

WindowState

Window positioning - How it works...

WindowStartupLocation

There's more...

What is the minimum screen resolution you should be targeting?

General window usage guidelines

See also

Wizards

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

Brief overview of different wizard page types

Getting started page

Choice page(s)

Commit page

Progress page

Follow-up page

To design resizable wizards or not

When to use wizards

Guidelines

See also

Progressive disclosure—showing additional controls on demand

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

Changing the expander control's header label

When to use progressive disclosure

See also

Control docking with DockPanel

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

Change the docking order of child elements

Change the orientation of a dock panel

Personal view

See also

Journal navigation

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

Removing the navigation chrome

Difference between Title and WindowTitle

When to use journal navigation

See also

Tabs

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

Changing tab orientation

Adding icons in tabs

When to use tabs

Real-world metaphor

Implementation guidelines

See also

Adding a status bar area

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

Adding other controls to StatusBar

Adding SizeGrip to StatusBar

When to use status bar

Implementation guidelines

2. Handling Data

Data applications

Time for action —creating a business object

What just happened?

Windows Communication Foundation (WCF)

Time for action —creating a Silverlight-enabled WCF service

What just happened?

Collecting data

Time for action —creating a form to collect data

What just happened?

Validating data

Data object

Time for action —creating a data object

What just happened?

Data binding

Time for action —binding our data object to our controls

What just happened?

Validation

Time for action —validating data input

What just happened?

Data submission

Time for action —submitting data to the server

What just happened?

Summary

3. An Introduction to Data Binding

Introduction

Displaying data in Silverlight applications

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

See also

Creating dynamic bindings

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

Binding data to another UI element

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

Element bindings without bindings

See also

Binding collections to UI elements

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

See also

Enabling a Silverlight application to automatically update its UI

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

Single objects

Collections

Cleaning up the code

Obtaining data from any UI element it is bound to

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

See also

Using the different modes of data binding to allow persisting data

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

See also

Data binding from Expression Blend 4

How to do it...

How it works...

Using Expression Blend 4 for sample data generation

How to do it...

4. Advanced Data Binding

Introduction

Hooking into the data binding process

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

The ConvertParameter

Displaying images based on a URL with converters

Replacing converters with Silverlight 4 BindingBase properties

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

See also

Validating databound input

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

See also

Validating data input using attributes

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

Other uses of data annotations

See also

Validating using IDataErrorInfo and INotifyDataErrorInfo

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

See also

Using templates to customize the way data is shown by controls

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

Building a change-aware collection type

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

See also

Combining converters, data binding, and DataContext into a custom DataTemplate

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

See also

5. The Data Grid

Introduction

Displaying data in a customized DataGrid

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more

See also

Inserting, updating, and deleting data in a DataGrid

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

See also

Sorting and grouping data in a DataGrid

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

Sorting a template column

See also

Filtering and paging data in a DataGrid

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

See also

Using custom columns in the DataGrid

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

Implementing master-detail in the DataGrid

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

Validating the DataGrid

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

6. Talking to REST and WCF Data Services

Introduction

Reading data from a REST service

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

See also

Parsing REST results with LINQ-To-XML

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

See also

Persisting data using a REST service

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

See also

Working with the ClientHttpStack

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

Advantages of ClientHttpStack

See also

Communicating with a REST service using JSON

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

See also

Using WCF Data Services with Silverlight

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

Locked-down services

See also

Reading data using WCF Data Services

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

See also

Persisting data using WCF Data Services

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

Talking to Flickr

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

Flickr... more information

See also

Talking to Twitter over REST

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

See also

Passing credentials and cross-domain access to Twitter from a trusted Silverlight application

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

Let's go cross-domain!

Pass me those credentials, will you?

7. Interacting with Data on the SharePoint Server

Managing data in a Silverlight RIA included in a SharePoint solution

Working with the SharePoint 2010 Silverlight Client Object Model to insert items

Inserting items in a SharePoint list with the Silverlight Web Part

Working with successful and failed asynchronous queries

Retrieving specific information about fields

Creating complex LOB applications composed of multiple Silverlight RIAs

Interacting with multiple Silverlight Web Parts in the same page

Understanding Line-Of-Business systems as independent Web Parts

Expanding LOB systems with delete operations

Understanding how to delete an item from a list

Expanding LOB systems with update operations

Updating an item in a list

Summary

8. Interacting with Rich Media and Animations

Bringing life to business applications and complex workflows

Creating asset libraries in SharePoint 2010

Adding content to an assets library

Browsing the structure for SharePoint Asset Libraries

Controlling the rich media library by using controls in a Visual Web Part

Creating a Silverlight RIA rendered in a SharePoint Visual Web Part

Linking a SharePoint Visual Web Part to a Silverlight RIA

Adding a SharePoint Visual Web Part in a Web Page

Organizing controls in a containing box

Reading files from an assets library

Working with interactive animations and effects

Adding and controlling videos

Video formats supported in Silverlight 4

Adding and controlling sounds and music

Audio formats supported in Silverlight 4

Changing themes in Silverlight and SharePoint

Summary

9. Data Access Strategies

Data access overview

Core networking classes

Working with WebClient

Using Fiddler

Understanding network security

Building services with Windows Communication Foundation

Working with WCF

The data access layer

Building a SOAP service

Building a REST service

Exploring OData data services

Building an OData service

Consuming an external service

Summary

10. Building Dashboards in SharePoint and Silverlight

Overview of SharePoint

Setting up SharePoint

Building a Silverlight web part

Using the Client Object Model

Building a SharePoint Silverlight dashboard

Setting up our data source

Building our dashboard

SharePoint Data Access Strategies

Summary

11. Working with 3D Characters

The second remake assignment

Time for action —exporting a 3D model without considering textures

What just happened?

XAML 3D models

Time for action —from DCC tools to WPF

What just happened?

XBAP WPF applications with 3D content

Time for action —displaying a 3D model in a 2D screen with WPF

What just happened?

Understanding the 3D world

X, Y, and Z in practice

GPU 3D acceleration

Understanding meshes

Time for action —using other XAML exporter for DCC tools

What just happened?

Time for action —adding 3D elements and interacting with them using Expression Blend

What just happened?

Interacting with 3D elements using Expression Blend

Silverlight and the 3D world

Time for action —exporting a 3D model to ASE

What just happened?

Time for action —installing Balder 3D engine

What just happened?

Time for action —from DCC tools to Silverlight

What just happened?

Displaying a 3D model in a 2D screen with Silverlight

Using 3D vectors

Have a go hero — working with multiple 3D characters

Pop quiz — 3D models and real-time rendering

Summary

Index

Managing Data and Media in Microsoft Silverlight 4: A mashup of chapters from Packt's bestselling Silverlight books

Managing Data and Media in Microsoft Silverlight 4: A mashup of chapters from Packt's bestselling Silverlight books

Copyright © 2012 Packt Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.

Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the authors, nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.

Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.

First published: February 2012

Production Reference: 1100212

Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.

Livery Place

35 Livery Street

Birmingham B3 2PB, UK.

ISBN 978-1-84968-564-1

www.packtpub.com

Cover Image by Artie Ng (<artherng@yahoo.com.au>)

Credits

Series Editor

Carl Jones

Contributors

Gastón C. Hillar

Gill Cleeren

Kevin Dockx

Todd Snyder

Joel Eden, PhD

Jeffrey Smith

Matthew Duffield

Cameron Albert

Frank LaVigne

Vibor Cipan

Technical Editor

Arun Nadar

Production Coordinator

Arvindkumar Gupta

Cover Work

Arvindkumar Gupta

About the Contributors

Gastón C. Hillar has been working with computers since he was eight. He began programming with the legendary Texas TI-99/4A and Commodore 64 home computers in the early 80s.

He has a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science—graduated with honors—and an MBA (Masters in Business Administration)—graduated with an outstanding thesis. He worked as a developer, architect, and a project manager for many companies in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Now, he is an independent IT consultant and a freelance author always looking for new adventures around the world. He also works with electronics (he is an electronics technician). He is always researching about new technologies and writing about them. He owns an IT and electronics laboratory with many servers, monitors, and measuring instruments.

Gastón wrote the C# 2008 and 2005 Threaded Programming: Beginner's Guide also published by Packt.

He is also the author of more than 40 books in Spanish about computer science, modern hardware, programming, systems development, software architecture, business applications, balanced scorecard applications, IT project management, the Internet, and electronics.

He contributes to Dr. Dobb's Go Parallel programming portal http://www.ddj.com/go-parallel/ and he is a guest blogger at Intel Software Network http://software.intel.com

He usually writes articles for Spanish magazines Mundo Linux, Solo Programadores, and Resistor.

Gill Cleeren is Microsoft Regional Director (http://www.theregion.com), Silverlight MVP (former ASP.NET MVP), and Telerik MVP. He lives in Belgium where he works as a .NET architect at Ordina (http://www.ordina.be/). He is passionate about .NET and always plays with the newest bits. In his role as Regional Director, Gill has given many sessions, webcasts, and training on new as well as existing technologies, such as Silverlight, ASP.NET, and WPF at conferences including TechEd Berlin 2010, TechDays Belgium Switzerland Sweden, DevDays NL, NDC Oslo Norway, DevReach Bulgaria, NRW Conference Germany, Spring Conference UK, Telerik Silverlight Roadshow in Sweden, and Telerik RoadShow UK. He is the author of Packt's Microsoft Silverlight 4 Data and Services Cookbook and is also the author of many articles in various developer magazines and for SilverlightShow.net. He organizes the yearly Community Day event in Belgium and also leads Visug (http://www.visug.be), the largest .NET user group in Belgium. You can find his blog at http://www.snowball.be and on Twitter by following @gillcleeren.

Kevin Dockx lives in Belgium and works at RealDolmen, one of Belgium's biggest ICT companies, where he is a 30-year old technical specialist/project leader on .NET web applications, mainly Silverlight, and a solution manager for Rich Applications (Silverlight, Windows Phone 7, WPF, Surface, and HTML5). His main focus is on all things related to Silverlight, but he still keeps an eye on the new developments concerning other products from the Microsoft .NET (Web) Stack. As a Silverlight enthusiast, he's a regular speaker on various national and international events, such as Microsoft DevDays in the Netherlands, Microsoft Techdays in Portugal, NDC Oslo Norway, and Community Day Belgium. He is the author of Packt's Microsoft Silverlight 4 Data and Services Cookbook and also writes articles for various Silverlight-related sites and magazines. His blog, which contains various tidbits on Silverlight, .NET, and the occasional rambling, can be found at http://blog.kevindockx.com/, and you can find him on Twitter as well: @KevinDockx.

Todd Snyder has been a software developer/architect for over 16 years. During that time, he has spent several years as a consultant providing technical guidance and leadership for the development of enterprise class systems on the Microsoft Platform. At Infragistics, he is a principal consultant that focuses on the design and construction of RIA and n-tier based applications. Todd is the co-leader for the New Jersey .Net user group (http://www.njdotnet.net/) and is a frequent speaker at trade shows, code camps, and Firestarters.

Joel Eden, PhD has been working in the area of user experience and design methods for over 10 years. Currently a Senior Interaction Designer working on UX Tools at Infragistics, he spent three years in the Infragistics Services group, consulting for external clients. Prior to Infragistics, he worked at multiple design agencies in the Philadelphia area, as well as working at Lockheed Martin's Advanced Technology Labs. Joel holds a B.S. in Computer Science, and a Ph.D in Information Science, both from Drexel University.

Jeffrey Smith has been a Visual Designer for six years. During that time he has been an Art Director at various agencies and studied special effects and animation at NYU. A convert from flash and flex, he has been working with .NET technologies for the past two years, specializing in WPF and Silverlight. At Infragistics, he is an UX Visual Designer that focuses on the design, implementation, and user experience. You can view some of his work at http://www.thinksinkstudio.com.

Matthew Duffield is a .NET architect in designing and developing enterprise applications. He specializes in .NET with an emphasis on WPF, Silverlight, and WP7 development. He is a Microsoft MVP in Client Application Development and has an MSCD.NET certification. He also works in business intelligence, designing, and developing solutions for data warehouse and data mining initiatives. You can read his blog at mattduffield.wordpress.com and follow him on Twitter at @mattduffield.

Cameron Albert is an independent software development consultant with over 10 years of experience, specializing in Microsoft technologies such as Silverlight, WPF, WCF, SQL Server, and ASP.NET. Having worked in the medical, insurance, and media/entertainment industries, Cameron has been involved in a variety of development solutions featuring a broad range of technical issues. He also dabbles in game development utilizing Silverlight and maintains a blog detailing his exploits into the development world here: http://www.cameronalbert.com.

Frank LaVigne has been hooked on with software development since he was 12, when he got his own Commodore 64 computer. Since then, he's worked as developer for financial firms on Wall Street and also in Europe. He has worked on various Tablet PC solutions and on building advanced user experiences in Silverlight and WPF. He lives in the suburbs of Washington, DC. He founded the CapArea.NET User Group Silverlight Special Interest Group and has been recognized by Microsoft as a Tablet PC MVP. He blogs regularly at www.FranksWorld.com.

Vibor Cipan is currently serving as the CEO and Partner of FatDUX Zagreb—a full service interactive UX and service design agency with offices around the world. Before joining FatDUX, Vibor, he worked at Microsoft Development Center in Copenhagen and before that, at Microsoft, Croatia. One thing, however, has stayed constant—his focus on user experience, service design, usability, and information architecture. He has been awarded the prestigious title of Microsoft Most Valuable Professional for three years in a row (and is still currently holding that title). He was the youngest awardee and the first one in the CEE, Europe to receive the award while being a full-time student.

www.PacktPub.com

Support files, eBooks, discount offers and more

You might want to visit www.PacktPub.com for support files and downloads related to your book.

Did you know that Packt offers eBook versions of every book published, with PDF and ePub files available? You can upgrade to the eBook version at www.PacktPub.com and as a print book customer, you are entitled to a discount on the eBook copy. Get in touch with us at for more details.

At www.PacktPub.com, you can also read a collection of free technical articles, sign up for a range of free newsletters and receive exclusive discounts and offers on Packt books and eBooks.

http://PacktLib.PacktPub.com

Do you need instant solutions to your IT questions? PacktLib is Packt's online digital book library. Here, you can access, read and search across Packt's entire library of books.

Why Subscribe?

Fully searchable across every book published by Packt

Copy and paste, print and bookmark content

On demand and accessible via web browser

Free Access for Packt account holders

If you have an account with Packt at www.PacktPub.com, you can use this to access PacktLib today and view nine entirely free books. Simply use your login credentials for immediate access.

Instant Updates on New Packt Books

Get notified! Find out when new books are published by following @PacktEnterprise on Twitter, or the Packt Enterprise Facebook page.

Preface

A Packt Compendium is a book formed by drawing existing content from several related Packt titles. In other words, it is a mashup of published Packt content Professional Expertise Distilled in the true sense. Such a compendium of Packt's content allows you to learn from each of the chapters' unique styles and Packt does its best to compile the chapters without breaking the narrative flow for the reader.

Please note that the chapters in this compendium were originally written and intended as a part of various separate Packt titles, so you might find that the information included in this instance is more akin to that of a standalone chapter, rather than creating step-by-step, continuous flowing prose. We are sure that you will find this medley a useful and valuable resource with which you can benefit from a range of Packt books and their authors' expertise!

Managing Data and Media in Microsoft Silverlight 4: A mashup of chapters from Packt's bestselling Silverlight focuses on showing .NET developers how to interact with, and handle multiple sources of data in Silverlight business applications, and how to solve particular data problems following a practical hands-on approach, using real-world examples. This book is a collection of media- and data-based chapters from Packt's best selling Silverlight books:

Silverlight 4 User Interface Cookbook

Microsoft Silverlight 4 Business Application Development: Beginner's Guide

Microsoft Silverlight 4 Data and Services Cookbook

Microsoft Silverlight 4 and SharePoint 2010 Integration

Microsoft Silverlight 4: Building Rich Enterprise Dashboards

3D Game Development with Microsoft Silverlight 3: Beginner's Guide

Microsoft Silverlight is a programmable web browser plugin that enables features including animation, vector graphics, and audio-video playback features that characterize Rich Internet Applications. However, Silverlight is a great Line-Of-Business platform and is increasingly being used to build data-driven business applications. This book will enable .NET developers to get their finger on the pulse of data-driven business applications in Silverlight.

In this book, you will find content in various easy-to-follow styles such as a recipe-based cookbook format, tutorial-based beginner's guide, and a reference-styled handbook. The aim of this book is to provide a lot of valuable content to you from various other Packt Silverlight books. It is designed in such a way that you can refer to the topics chapter-by-chapter, and read them in no particular order. It offers clear examples to successfully perform the most important data-related tasks in Silverlight.

What this book covers

The book starts with discussion on layouts and content organization and covers all the options available to access data and communicate with services to get the most out of data in your Silverlight business applications, at the same time providing a rich user experience. Understand sophisticated data access techniques in your Silverlight business applications by binding data to Silverlight controls, validating data in Silverlight, getting data from services into Silverlight applications, and much more! Discover the tips, tricks, and hands on experience to create, customize, and design rich enterprise dashboards with Silverlight from a distinguished team of User Experience and Development authors.

Chapter 1, Layouts and General Content Organization, covers important layout considerations to be made before we start building any application, regardless of being a web application built with Silverlight or a typical desktop application built with Windows Presentation Foundation.

Chapter 2, Handling Data, covers the process of collecting and handling data input from a customer and saving that input on the server. We also looked at how to bind data to control properties and how to provide simple data validation using the built-in visual states provided in the textbox control.

Chapter 3, An Introduction to Data Binding, explains how data binding allows us to build data-driven applications in Silverlight in a much easier and much faster way compared to old-school methods of displaying and editing data.

Chapter 4, Advanced Data Binding, explores the data binding engine that gives many points where we can extend or change the binding process.

Chapter 5, The Data Grid, shows how to work with the DataGrid. This is an essential control for applications that rely on (collections of) data.

Chapter 6, Talking to REST and WCF Data Services, here, we'll first look at talking with REST services from Silverlight. Secondly, we'll look at how to work with WCF Data Services (formerly known as ADO.NET Data Services), which are also pure REST services at their base.

Chapter 7, Interacting with Data on the SharePoint Server, will cover many topics that help us create simple and complex Line-Of-Business Silverlight RIAs that run as Silverlight Web Parts to interact with data in the SharePoint Server.

Chapter 8, Interacting with Rich Media and Animations, will cover many topics related to retrieving digital assets from SharePoint libraries through the SharePoint Silverlight Client Object Model and consuming them in a Silverlight RIA.

Chapter 9, Data Access Strategies, will introduce you to the features included in SharePoint 2010 for hosting Silverlight dashboard applications. We will explore how to set up a Silverlight web part, and use the SharePoint Silverlight Client Object Model to communicate with data hosted in SharePoint.

Chapter 10, Building Dashboards in SharePoint and Silverlight, will explore the different data access strategies you can use while building a Silverlight application. How to build your own custom data services using SOAP, REST, and OData, a walkthrough of how to consume externally-hosted services, and how the cross-domain security policy system works with Silverlight to call external services.

Chapter 11, Working with 3D Characters, will take 3D elements from popular and professional 3D DCC tools and we will show them rendered in real-time on the screen.

What you need for this book

As this Packt Compendium is a mash-up of published Packt content, the prerequisites may vary between each chapter. Everything you will need for this book is detailed according to the respective source title:

Chapters taken from Silverlight 4 User Interface Cookbook uses Expression Blend 4 for virtually all recipes in it. You might find it useful to use Visual Studio 2010 (or one of its free express editions) for better code editing and development experience, but Expression Blend 4 should be your first choice for this book.

Though the book covers mostly Silverlight 4 and the user interface patterns and user experience guidelines are referring to Silverlight, first few chapters utilize WPF 4 (Windows Presentation Foundation) technology. Almost all ideas, approaches, methods, and guidelines applicable to WPF are also applicable to Silverlight itself.

In order to use and follow all recipes, be sure that, apart from Expression Blend 4 you have installed Silverlight Toolkit. Silverlight toolkit adds support for numerous additional controls of your Silverlight 4 controls. You can get it from http://silverlight.codeplex.com.

The last part of the book showcases usage of the PathListBox control. This control supported under Silverlight 4 is not (at the moment of writing this book) part of the Silverlight or Silverlight Toolkit. Also, effects, pixel shaders, and numerous other features are available to you when you install Expression Blend 4 SDK for Silverlight 4 available for free from: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=d197f51a-de07-4edf-9cba-1f1b4a22110d&displaylang=en (short link: http://bit.ly/9KaiIG).

Chapters taken from Microsoft Silverlight 4 Business Application Development: Beginner's Guide will need the following tools to view the samples and run the code provided. While the Expression tools are discussed and used within the book they are not a requirement to build Silverlight applications, they simply make it easier. Visual Studio 2010 provides a design view of XAML pages so that you can visually design the interface, which saves a lot of hand coding of XAML.

Visual Studio 2010

Silverlight 4 Tools for Visual Studio

WCF RIA Services

Expression Blend

Expression Encoder

SQL Express

A SharePoint VPC or development installation (for the SharePoint samples)

Chapters taken from Microsoft Silverlight 4 Data and Services Cookbook requires that you have Visual Studio installed. This book targets Silverlight 4, which works only with Visual Studio 2010. Many of the recipes in the book will also work in Silverlight 3, so for these recipes, you have the choice between Visual Studio 2008 and 2010. We do recommend using Visual Studio 2010, as it features a lot of enhancements for developing with Silverlight. In both cases, you'll of course need to install the Silverlight Tools, which will update your Visual Studio instance to work with Silverlight. Some recipes also require Blend 4 to be installed on your machine (again, if working with Silverlight 3, Blend 3 will suffice here as well).

The first recipe of Chapter 1, Getting our environment ready to start developing Silverlight applications, explains in detail how to get these tools and how to install them.

Chapters taken from Microsoft Silverlight 4 and SharePoint 2010 Integration will need the following software products:

Visual Studio 2010 Professional, Premium, or Ultimate

SharePoint 2010 Server or SharePoint 2010 Foundation, installed on the same computer that runs Visual Studio 2010

SharePoint Designer 2010

Chapters taken from Microsoft Silverlight 4: Building Rich Enterprise Dashboards will need to have the following available:

Visual Studio 2010 Express or Professional Edition

SQL Server 2008 R2 Express or Developer Edition

Silverlight 5.0 SDK

Silverlight 5.0 Toolkit

Microsoft Expression Blend 4.0 (with Updates for Silverlight 5.0)

Share Point 2010 Foundations (Optional only required for Chapter 10,

Chapters taken from 3D Game Development with Microsoft Silverlight 3: Beginner's Guide will need Visual C# 2008 (.NET Framework 3.5) with Service Pack 1, or greater Visual C# 2010 installed.

You can use the free Visual Web Developer 2008 Express Edition or greater (http://www.microsoft.com/express/vwd/). However, you have to read the documentation to consider its limitations carefully.

Who this book is for

If you are a .NET developer who wants to manage professional data-driven applications with Silverlight, then this book is for you. Basic experience of programming Silverlight and familiarity with accessing data using ADO.NET in normal .NET applications is required.

Conventions

In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.

Code words in text are shown as follows: The CakeService.svc.cs file will contain the implementation of our service interface.

A block of code is set as follows:

LayoutRoot>

69/>

0.52*/>

Auto/>

69/>

When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:

private void Application_Startup(object sender, StartupEventArgs e)

{

this.RootVisual = new MainPage();

// Initialize the ApplicationContext

ApplicationContext.Init(e.InitParams, System.Threading.SynchronizationContext.Current);

}

New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: Click on UserControl and change its height and width to Auto.

Note

Warnings or important notes appear in a box like this.

Tip

Tips and tricks appear like this.

Reader feedback

Feedback from our readers is always welcome. Let us know what you think about this book what you liked or may have disliked. Reader feedback is important for us to develop titles that you really get the most out of.

To send us general feedback, simply send an e-mail to <feedback@packtpub.com>, and mention the book title via the subject of your message.

If there is a book that you need and would like to see us publish, please send us a note in the SUGGEST A TITLE form on www.packtpub.com or e-mail .

If there is a topic that you have expertise in and you are interested in either writing or contributing to a book, see our author guide on www.packtpub.com/authors.

Customer support

Now that you are the proud owner of a Packt book, we have a number of things to help you to get the most from your purchase.

Downloading the example code

You can download the example code files for all Packt books you have purchased from your account at http://www.packtpub.com. If you purchased this book elsewhere, you can visit http://www.packtpub.com/support and register to have the files e-mailed directly to you.

This book is a compendium title which is extracted from five different best-selling books by Packt. The code bundles for these individual titles can be also downloaded from www.packtpub.com/support.

Errata

Although we have taken every care to ensure the accuracy of our content, mistakes do happen. If you find a mistake in one of our books maybe a mistake in the text or the code we would be grateful if you would report this to us. By doing so, you can save other readers from frustration and help us improve subsequent versions of this book. If you find any errata, please report them by visiting http://www.packtpub.com/support, selecting your book, clicking on the errata submission form link, and entering the details of your errata. Once your errata are verified, your submission will be accepted and the errata will be uploaded on our website, or added to any list of existing errata, under the Errata section of that title. Any existing errata can be viewed by selecting your title from http://www.packtpub.com/support.

Piracy

Piracy of copyright material on the Internet is an ongoing problem across all media. At Packt, we take the protection of our copyright and licenses very seriously. If you come across any illegal copies of our works, in any form, on the Internet, please provide us with the location address or website name immediately so that we can pursue a remedy.

Please contact us at <copyright@packtpub.com> with a link to the suspected pirated material.

We appreciate your help in protecting our authors, and our ability to bring you valuable content.

Questions

You can contact us at <questions@packtpub.com> if you are having a problem with any aspect of the book, and we will do our best to address it.

Chapter 1. Layouts and General Content Organization

Note

This chapter is taken from Silverlight 4 User Interface Cookbook (Chapter 1) by Vibor Cipan.

In this chapter, we will cover:

Liquid versus fixed layouts

Navigation pane and how to create one from scratch

Window management and positioning

Wizards

Progressive disclosure—showing additional controls on demand

Control docking with Dock Panel

Journal navigation

Tabs

Status bar area

Introduction

Before we start building any application, regardless of being a web application built with Silverlight or a typical desktop application built with Windows Presentation Foundation, we will be faced with making some very basic and extremely important decisions. Will our application be able to scale to all of the different screens and resolutions or are we