Comments on: Microsoft Silverlight 3 – It’s hard work! http://www.a51.org.uk/2009/08/21/microsoft-silverlight-3-its-hard-work/ Consuming a healthy amount of suckers online everyday! Tue, 06 Jul 2010 11:51:56 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 By: zyclonium http://www.a51.org.uk/2009/08/21/microsoft-silverlight-3-its-hard-work/comment-page-1/#comment-1198 zyclonium Fri, 18 Dec 2009 23:05:10 +0000 http://www.a51.org.uk/?p=190#comment-1198 Hi Edar, Firstly, let me apologise for my extremely late response to your post. It got lost in a flood of spam comments until I found and approved it recently. (Akismet has since been unleashed and the spam is generally getting bashed about and banished now! :)) Silverlight is a technology that I would love to spend some more time with. At the time I wrote the post we were just trying to quickly evaluate it alongside other solutions. I did find a few minor but annoying differences between Silverlight 2, the Silverlight 3 beta and the Silverlight 3 final release. It was usually just methods being moved between namespaces which isn't a big deal but it does throw you a little. I tend to think of a Silverlight application as a Windows application running as an applet inside a small ASP.NET wrapper page. I'm not sure if that's the best description though. (I think of Silverlight as being more related to Flash than ASP.NET.) We were looking at the new Silverlight Navigation framework in Silverlight 3 though so the analogy of "pages" is appropriate. Although I accept that it is very wrong to think of them in the same way as ASP.NET pages. I just think of "changing page" as "flipping the XAML layout". Thanks for your comment and good luck with your future Silverlight projects. (Also thanks for the book recommendation, I will have a look for it!) Hi Edar,

Firstly, let me apologise for my extremely late response to your post. It got lost in a flood of spam comments until I found and approved it recently. (Akismet has since been unleashed and the spam is generally getting bashed about and banished now! :) )

Silverlight is a technology that I would love to spend some more time with. At the time I wrote the post we were just trying to quickly evaluate it alongside other solutions. I did find a few minor but annoying differences between Silverlight 2, the Silverlight 3 beta and the Silverlight 3 final release. It was usually just methods being moved between namespaces which isn’t a big deal but it does throw you a little.

I tend to think of a Silverlight application as a Windows application running as an applet inside a small ASP.NET wrapper page. I’m not sure if that’s the best description though. (I think of Silverlight as being more related to Flash than ASP.NET.)

We were looking at the new Silverlight Navigation framework in Silverlight 3 though so the analogy of “pages” is appropriate. Although I accept that it is very wrong to think of them in the same way as ASP.NET pages. I just think of “changing page” as “flipping the XAML layout”.

Thanks for your comment and good luck with your future Silverlight projects. (Also thanks for the book recommendation, I will have a look for it!)

]]> By: Edar Harris http://www.a51.org.uk/2009/08/21/microsoft-silverlight-3-its-hard-work/comment-page-1/#comment-447 Edar Harris Sun, 23 Aug 2009 04:21:53 +0000 http://www.a51.org.uk/?p=190#comment-447 I'm actually wrapping up an application written in Silverlight 2 right now. We'll move it over to Silverlight 3 as soon as we release the application. As of now I strongly recommend you read Pro Silverlight 2 in C# 2008, authored by Matthew MacDonald. ISBN: 978-1-59059-949-5. I realize that this is a Silverlight 2 book, but almost everything that applies to Silverlight 2 also applies to Silverlight 3. It's also important to note that in many ways Silverlight 3 just builds off of Silverlight 2. I know this book gave me a huge edge on our project, so much so that I became the team lead on the project. I agree with you on Time Heuer's blog, it's a great resource. I also recommend studying up on the Model, View, View Model (MVVM) pattern that has become very popular in the WPF world. I've also noticed that many developers get confused about Silverlight, because they don't understand what it is. Many developers think that since Silverlight runs over the Web it must be similar to ASP.NET. Silverlight is actually nothing like ASP.NET, because Silverlight is a client side technology, whereas ASP.NET is a server side technology. I find it's useful to think of a Silverlight application as a client application that communicates with the server, mostly because that's what it is. With this in mind you should definitely quit thinking about "pages" and instead think about user controls, there's a huge difference. Good luck on your application. I hope you find using Silverlight to be as enjoyable as I did. I’m actually wrapping up an application written in Silverlight 2 right now. We’ll move it over to Silverlight 3 as soon as we release the application. As of now I strongly recommend you read Pro Silverlight 2 in C# 2008, authored by Matthew MacDonald. ISBN: 978-1-59059-949-5. I realize that this is a Silverlight 2 book, but almost everything that applies to Silverlight 2 also applies to Silverlight 3. It’s also important to note that in many ways Silverlight 3 just builds off of Silverlight 2. I know this book gave me a huge edge on our project, so much so that I became the team lead on the project. I agree with you on Time Heuer’s blog, it’s a great resource. I also recommend studying up on the Model, View, View Model (MVVM) pattern that has become very popular in the WPF world.

I’ve also noticed that many developers get confused about Silverlight, because they don’t understand what it is. Many developers think that since Silverlight runs over the Web it must be similar to ASP.NET. Silverlight is actually nothing like ASP.NET, because Silverlight is a client side technology, whereas ASP.NET is a server side technology. I find it’s useful to think of a Silverlight application as a client application that communicates with the server, mostly because that’s what it is. With this in mind you should definitely quit thinking about “pages” and instead think about user controls, there’s a huge difference. Good luck on your application. I hope you find using Silverlight to be as enjoyable as I did.

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