Professional Silverlight 2 for ASP. NET Developers

by Jonathan Swift; Salvador Alvarez Patuel; Chris Barker (University College London, UK); Dan Wahlin

• ISBN13: 9780470277751
• ISBN10: 0470277750
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-02-01
• Publisher: Wrox

Summary

Web developers turn to Microsoft's Silverlight to build rich, interactive Web applications with animation, graphics, audio, and video; ASP.NET developers in particular discover that they can build more richly interactive applications than they can with ASP.NET alone Brings ASP.NET developers up to speed on the latest Silverlight 2.0 features and functions, from the fundamentals to advanced topics; the information is geared to ASP.NET developers, making it immediately useful to them Focuses on eachfacet of Silverlight thatenhances, alters, updates or replaces existing methods for ASP.NET programming Shows how to program to get the most from not only Silverlight, but also from the ASP.NET delivery platform; each chapter also includes a lab session for reinforcement and practice

Author Biography

Jonathan Swift worked as an Application Development Consultant for Microsoft in the United Kingdom for a number of years and now finds himself managing the team. This means that he spends most of his time traveling around the country helping clients utilize Microsoft developer technologies effectively. Jonathan has been programming for more than 13 years and has worked with numerous technologies, including but not limited to C, C++, Visual Basic, COM, COM+, SQL, ASP, and, of course, all aspects of .NET. As well as programming, Jonathan also spent part of his career working as a Microsoft Trainer, delivering the full suite of Microsoft Official Curriculum courses and specially-designed courses also.

Jonathan tries to keep his blog (http://blogs.msdn.com/jonathanswift) up to date, but feels that writing a book is a very good excuse for not doing so. (Other popular excuses including playing the XBox and washing his hair.) When he’s not working, Jonathan spends all of his time with his wife and kids, and occasionally gets to exercise his pilot’s license at the flying club.

Chris Barker works as an Application Development Consultant for Microsoft in the United Kingdom (www.microsoft.com/uk/adc). He spends his days traveling around the country visiting customers and consulting on development practices on the Microsoft platform. More recently, his interest has been captured by RIA development, and as a result, he has delivered several customer workshops on Silverlight. Away from the office, Chris likes to get out and about in his home county of Derbyshire, riding a bike, kicking a football, and sinking a few pints of real ale.

Dan Wahlin (Microsoft Most Valuable Professional for Connected Systems) is a .NET development instructor and architecture consultant at Interface Technical Training (www.interfacett.com). Dan founded the XML for ASP.NET Developers web site (www.xmlforasp.net), which focuses on using ASP.NET, Silverlight, AJAX, and XML Web Services in Microsoft’s .NET platform. He’s also on the INETA Speaker’s Bureau and speaks at several conferences. Dan has authored/co-authored numerous books over the years on .NET technologies with his latest being Professional ASP.NET 3.5 AJAX and Professional Silverlight 2 for ASP.NET Developers. Dan also writes for several online technical newsletters, blogs at http://weblogs.asp.net/dwahlin, and updates what he’s up to from time to time at www.twitter.com/danwahlin. When he’s not working with technology, he enjoys sports and writing and recording music to relax a little — http://weblogs.asp.net/dwahlin/archive/tags/ Music/default.aspx.

Salvador Alvarez Patuel has been in the industry for more than 13 years. Currently a senior application development consultant (ADC) at Microsoft, helping customers to architect and build complex solutions using Microsoft technologies in the United Kingdom. Salvador has also been delivering multiple technical sessions around EMEA on Windows Mobile development and has been answering questions on many ask-the-experts events. Before joining Microsoft, he was the main technical architect for real-time engines on popular auctions, TV channels, and the gaming industry. He holds a software engineering degree from his native Argentina and a specialization in artificial intelligence. When Salva is not thinking about ones and zeroes, he enjoys climbing, windsurfing, and recently trying to learn how to play golf.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Silverlight Fundamentals for ASP.NET Developers

Silverlight in a Nutshell

Uphill Struggle

Rich Client or Web Reach?

Silverlight Steps In

The Impact of Silverlight on Your Existing ASP.NET Real Estate

What You Should Still Do in ASP.NET

The Development Environment Overview

Summary

Silverlight Architecture

Client/Server Architecture Overview

Platforms

Architecture

ASP.NET Integration

Application Life Cycle

Summary

XAML Condensed

Why All ASP.NET Developers Should Know the Basics

XAML Syntax and Terminology

Piecing It All Together

Summary

Programming Silverlight

How a Silverlight Application Is Composed

JavaScript ù How Much You Need to Know

JavaScript ù The Basics

The Silverlight Object Model

Events, Threading, and Browser Interaction

Developing ASP.NET Applications with Silverlight

Creating the User Interface

Expression Suite ù A Whirlwind Tour

ASP.NET versus Silverlight Layout

Summary

Silverlight Controls

Introduction to Silverlight Controls

Media Controls

Silverlight Toolkit Controls

Summary

Styles and Templates

Styles

Templating

Integrating with ASP.NET

ImplicitStyleManager

Summary

User Interaction

The Silverlight Interaction Context

Navigation

Summary

Communicating with the ServerSilverlight Networking and Communication Features

Cross-Domain Support

Creating Services for Silverlight

Calling Services with Silverlight

Calling REST APIsSummary

Working with Data

Data Framework

Data-Binding Essentials

Retrieving and Storing Data

Data Controls

Manipulating Data

LINQ

LINQ to XML

Validation

Summary

Creating Custom Controls

User Controls

Customizing Current Controls

Custom Controls

Summary

Securing Your Silverlight Application

YouÆre under Attack!

The Security Model

Working in a Sandbox

Cross-Domain Security

Integrating with ASP.NET Security

Obfuscation

Cryptography

Summary

Audio and Video

First Steps

Finer Control

Summary

Graphics and Animation

Breathing Life into ASP.NET

Graphics in Silverlight

Image Handling

Animating Your User Interface

Summary

Troubleshooting

Is There a Problem?

Common Types of Problems

Your Toolkit

Reducing the Likelihood of Problems

Summary

Performance

Performance Bottlenecks

Instrumentation

Improving Performance

Summary

Index

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