The future of Silverlight

Due to rumors swiling about the demise of Silverlight at the hands of HTML 5, Microsoft felt compelled to publish the following on the Silverlight Blog:

In about half the time HTML 5 has been under design, we've created Silverlight and shipped four major versions of it. And it's still unclear exactly when HTML 5 and its related specs will be complete with full test suites. For HTML 5 to be really targetable, the spec has to stabilize, browsers have to all implement the specs in the same way, and over a billion people have to install a new browser or buy a new device or machine. That's going to take a while. And by the time HTML 5 is broadly targetable, Silverlight will have evolved significantly. Meanwhile, Silverlight is here now and works in all popular browsers and OS's.

…Silverlight is much more than a browser technology.

There are three areas of investment for Silverlight outside the browser: the desktop, the mobile device, and the living room. Powerful desktop applications can be created with Silverlight today. These applications don't require a separate download—any desktop user with Silverlight installed has these capabilities. These apps can be discovered and downloaded in the browser but are standalone applications that are painless to install and delete. Silverlight now also runs on mobile devices and is the main development platform for the new Windows Phone 7 devices. Developers that learned Silverlight instantly became mobile developers. Lastly, at NAB and the Silverlight 4 launch this year we showed how Silverlight can be used as a powerful, rich platform for living room devices as well.

Read the whole thing. It’s long but worth the time.

Silverlight 4 – September 2010 refresh

Microsoft has released a refresh for Silverlight 4 to fix some bugs. Read Tim Heuer’s blog post.

If you are developing in LightSwitch, then you will need the new Developer Runtime and SDK.

• Windows developer runtime
• Mac developer runtime
• Silverlight 4.0.50826.0 SDK

The Silverlight Tools package has also been updated with the new SDK and runtime.

More LightSwitch commentary

Tim Anderson has two informative posts about Microsoft’s LightSwitch. I’ll try to summarize them here.

Ten things you need to know about LightSwitch (Tim Anderson):

1. LightSwitch builds Silverlight apps for Windows, and to a lesser extent, Mac.
2. There is no visual forms designer.
3. However, you can customize your form while running in the debugger.
4. LightSwitch lets you build a model of your application behind the scenes.
5. It has built-in business data-types like E-mail Address and Phone Number.
6. LightSwitch tries to make it easier for non-developers to understand relational database design.
7. To that end, it uses LINQ and not SQL.
8. LightSwitch will be cheaper than VS Professional when it releases.
9. LightSwitch applications are cloud-ready, as long as you want to use Windows Azure.
10. Tim speculates that Windows Phone 7 will be added as a target platform.

Visual Studio LightSwitch – model-driven architecture for the mainstream (Tim Anderson):

Tim spoke to two LightSwitch team members. They couldn’t speculate on a release date, but did say that Windows Phone 7 will not be targeted in the first release. Perhaps it will be added later. The product was designed to allow different output formats for applications, but Mac is not considered high-priority. The development of LightSwitch had an influence on the design of some WCF RIA Services features.

While Microsoft seems to be positioning LightSwitch as a tool for the masses to develop departmental applications, it remains to be seen if it will catch on. Perhaps on a larger scale, Microsoft intends to deliver on the promise of model-driven application generation. And that would be no small feat.

Visual Studio LightSwitch Beta1

Microsoft has released the first beta of its LightSwitch product.

LightSwitch allows you to create web-based data-driven applications, using industry-standard patterns and technologies: Entity Framework, WCF RIA Services and Silverlight.

More LightSwitch links:

• The LightSwitch Developer Center
• LightSwitch Training Kit
• The LightSwitch Blog

Silverlight 4 Beta Available

Get the news here: Silverlight 4 Beta : The Official Microsoft Silverlight Site

Silverlight 4 development will require Visual Studio 2010.

Visual Studio 2010 can be installed side-by-side with Visual Studio 2008 SP1. Please read the known issue on installing Visual Studio 2010 if you already have the Silverlight 3 SDK installed.

Silverlight 4 on MDSN: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc838158(VS.96).aspx

What’s New (partial listing)

Printing (finally): Silverlight 4 adds printing support that allows developers to control whether their Silverlight application can print itself, how the content is formatted when printed, and determine the content that will appear. For example, you could add a print button to your Silverlight application that opens the Print dialog allows the user to choose the printer, and then prints the Silverlight content.

Implicit Styles: Silverlight 4 introduces new styling features that allow you to create a style as a resource that can be used implicitly by all elements of a target type. This allows application developers to customize the look across multiple instances of a control and modify the appearance of these control instances by changing the implicit style.

Right Mouse Click: Silverlight 4 adds the ability to right click a visual element to perform custom actions such as displaying a menu that provides contextual commands or invoking commands for a Silverlight game.

Programmatic Clipboard Access: Silverlight 4 adds the ability to programmatically access the clipboard to format and modify data during copy, cut, and paste operations. To copy data from a Silverlight application to the clipboard use the Clipboard.SetText method

Silverlight as a Drop Target: Silverlight 4 now supports being a drop-target for the common drag-and-drop practice of clicking on a virtual object and dragging it to a different location or onto another virtual object. Both Windows and Mac platforms support this feature. Silverlight only supports dragging of file(s) from local client and dropping them onto a Silverlight application. It does not support dragging of folders (directories).

ObservableCollection<T> Constructor Accepts IList and IEnumerable (yay!): Silverlight 4 also can take advantage of new constructor overloads that allow it to initialize an ObservableCollection<T> from an IEnumerable or IList.

More can be found on Tim Heuer’s blog: http://timheuer.com/blog/archive/2009/11/18/whats-new-in-silverlight-4-complete-guide-new-features.aspx

RIA Services : The Official Microsoft Silverlight Site

Brad Abrams announced last week that Microsoft has launched an official community site for RIA Services.

You will see that the latest version available of RIA Services is still the July 2009 CTP.

I expect to see a new release next week at PDC.

RIA Services : The Official Microsoft Silverlight Site

Silverlight 3 released and available for download.

See Mary Jo Foley's piece here.

Also, tomorrow is the launch for SL3 and Expression 3. It starts at 10 AM PDT I am told - that's 1 PM on the East Coast.

Go to www.seethelight.com tomorrow to enjoy all the silvery goodness.

.NET RIA Services V1 Roadmap

Dinesh Kulkarni, from the RIA Services team, has published a roadmap for RIA Services. No guarantees here, but they hope to release a beta at PDC in November. The next CTP will be in July.

It's a bit disappointing to me. I had heard a rumor that RIA would release with Silverlight 3 in July. Perhaps it referred to the CTP. According to the roadmap, they are making changes to the underlying protocol (moving to ADO.NET Data Services), so you know that will take a lot of time.

Highlights from his post:

July 2009 CTP This is a preview, not the V1 release. We plan to drop go-live restriction from EULA – still use it at your own risk. Try to get significant known breaking changes (the ones we don’t know about will come later) Feature enhancements (e.g. code-gen hookpoints to add your custom code, improved library support, better shared code support, query for singletons, cleaner user model and better extensibility support for Application Services etc.) Usual fare of bug fixes, API improvements etc Enable a first set of better together experiences with  ADO.NET Data Services (add a DomainService to Data Service for writing app logic / expose DomainService as DataService) PDC 2009 Beta Additional core feature work (list TBD, under consideration – hierarchy support, presentation model) Work on Visual Studio 2010 / .NET 4 support Drag-drop support for databinding Run in medium trust Move to ADO.NET Data Services as the underlying protocol First part of 2010: RTW Polish beta release (bugs, perf, stress, security, localization, …) Small design changes / tweaks Keep up with changes in other products A note on Platforms and tools In each CTP, we will be keeping up with corresponding public Silverlight drops as and when they are scheduled (sorry, I don’t have that schedule) For RTW, we are planning Visual Studio 2010 / .NET 4  as the primary story. Support for previous version TBD (depends on feedback about relative importance / cost / options)

Resources for Developing Silverlight/Prism Applications

• Prism for Silverlight - An Intro to Composite Applications (Video)
  by Erik Mork
  
• Modularity - Testing, Module Catalog and Unity in Prism
  by Erik Mork
  
• Prism Quick Start Kit
  by David Hill
  
• Building a Prism Application (4 short videos)
  by Bob Brumfield and Erwin van der Valk
  
• Patterns and practices in the Composite Application Library
  by Pencho Popadiyn
  
• Model – View – ViewModel in Silverlight
  by Pencho Popadiyn
  
• Developing Modular Applications Using Microsoft Silverlight and WPF (TechEd Video)
  by Ward Bell
  
• Programming Prism (Public online class)
  by David Platt

Silverlight 3 and Expression Studio 3 to launch July 10, 2009

• http://news.softpedia.com/news/Silverlight-3-Drops-July-10-2009-112903.shtml
• http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=2912
• http://www.neowin.net/news/main/09/05/29/microsoft-confirms-silverlight-3-to-launch-on-july-10

Good news and bad news for Silverlight 3 development

According to this post by Tim Heuer, the good news is that you can install the Silverlight 2 and 3 SDKs with Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1. You will get multi-targeted Silverlight development (i.e., either Silverlight 2 or 3) and an editable design surface.

Do not install the Silverlight 2 or 3 Tools packages, it won't work on VS 2010. And the Silverlight Navigation App template is not included with the SDK, only with the tools package.

You also need to install the Silverlight 3 Beta Developer runtime.

The bad news: .NET RIA Services will not install on VS 2010 Beta 1.

.NET RIA Services minor bug fix release - May 2009 Preview

See the announcement on Brad Abrams blog - http://blogs.msdn.com/brada/archive/2009/05/11/net-ria-services-may-2009-preview.aspx

Brad states that the Go Live for .NET RIA Services will be right around the time that Silverlight 3 releases.

WPF Model-View-ViewModel Toolkit

The WPF team at Microsoft has released a toolkit (version 0.1) that addresses developing UIs with the M-V-VM pattern.

It's definitely a first-pass (e.g. no VB.NET support), but they are looking for feedback on this effort. There is also a bit of confusion as to how this compares to the Silverlight development pattern in RIA Services. See this StackOverflow discussion.

The toolkit includes:

• A Visual Studio 2008 template (Visual C# Express 2008 also supported)
• Documentation
  • General introduction to M-V-VM
  • Walkthrough using the VS template
• A complete WPF application demonstrating the M-V-VM pattern

Here's a post about ViewModel and how it enhances the UI's testability.

Check it out here: WPF Model-View-ViewModel Toolkit

WPF and Silverlight Books

Windows Presentation Foundation Unleashed (WPF)

Pro WPF: Windows Presentation Foundation in .NET 3.0

Programming WPF

Accelerated Silverlight 3

Pro Silverlight for the Enterprise

Pro Silverlight 2 in C# 2008 (Windows.Net)

Silverlight 3 Beta

http://silverlight.net/getstarted/silverlight3/default.aspx

Silverlight 3 Beta was unveiled at MIX09. It is a preview release which continues Silverlight’s track record of rapid innovation - introducing more than 50 new features, including support for running Silverlight applications out of the browser, dramatic video performance and quality improvements, and features that radically improve developer productivity.

Important notes:

• This is a developer beta release only! This means there is no “go-live” licensing available and the end-user runtime of Silverlight 3 is not available. The tools below are intended for software developers only.
• Once you install the Silverlight 3 Beta Tools for Visual Studio, your development environment will be a Silverlight 3 Beta environment.  Visual Studio 2008 SP1 does not support multi-targeting for Silverlight applications so you will be unable to develop Silverlight 2 applications once these tools are installed.  We recommend that you install the Silverlight 3 Beta tools on a separate environment if you still need to have the ability to develop Silverlight 2 applications.
• Ensure that you have either Visual Studio 2008 SP1 or Visual Web Developer Express 2008 SP1 installed as it is a prerequisite for the Silverlight 3 Beta Tools for Visual Studio.

MIX09 Sessions

Microsoft's MIX conference took place last week in Las Vegas, NV. It's a gathering of designers and developers who are focused on using Microsoft's latest and greatest tools to build web sites.

Silverlight and WPF are increasingly being seen as relevant tools for building line-of-business applications. Here are some of the talks that speak to Professional LOB app developers.

Web Development Using Microsoft Visual Studio: Now and in the Future

What's New in Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) 4

What's New for Microsoft Silverlight and Microsoft Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) Developers in Microsoft Visual Studio 2010

Automated User Interface (UI) Testing with Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2010

Microsoft Silverlight Is Ready for Business

User Experience Design Patterns for Business Applications with Microsoft Silverlight 3

Building Amazing Business Centric Applications with Microsoft Silverlight 3

Building Out of Browser Experiences with Microsoft Silverlight 3

Microsoft Silverlight and Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF): Sharing Skills and Code

.NET RIA Services - Building Data-Driven Applications with Microsoft Silverlight and Microsoft ASP.NET [Added]

Roundup - .NET Application Development Platforms

I've put together a collection of links from around the web on tools and technologies for developing .NET Line-of-business applications.

Silverlight 3 (beta) - Microsoft

Silverlight Labs - Microsoft

Silverlight Toolkit - CodePlex

WPF Hands-on lab (Southridge) - Microsoft Redmond

WPF Hands-on lab (Order Manager) - Microsoft Switzerland

WPF - CodePlex

Composite Application Guidance for WPF and Silverlight (Prism) - Microsoft P&P

Building a Framework for Silverlight - SilverlightShow

Caliburn - Rob Eisenberg

CSLA.NET (WPF and Silverlight) - Rocky Lhotka

DevForce WinClient - IdeaBlade

DevForce Silverlight - IdeaBlade

Nintex Workflow - Nintex

UPDATE: I added RIA services after listening to Brad Abram's talk on .NET Rocks. It was announced at MIX09.

RIA Services - Microsoft

RIA Services on SliverlightShow.

Unity Application Block 1.2 for Silverlight - December 2008

Not many changes here for Silverlight, just adjustments to the packaging to allow it to run in Silverlight...

Unity Application Block 1.2 for Silverlight - December 2008

And -- not sure how I missed it, but Unity 1.2 was released in October.

Ah, I remember, I was on vacation...

Silverlight 2 released

Microsoft released Silverlight 2 last week. Install it from here.

More resources here. Tutorials and videos.

Visual Studio Training Kit updated for 2008 SP1 and .NET SP1

Allan dCP has has a post about the updated (for SP1) Visual Studio 2008 training kit.

Notable:

• .NET SP1 Training Kit - new as of August 2008
• MIX University - source for WPF and Silverlight (and more) training
• SharePoint Development for .NET Developers