Chapter I: Introducing Silverlight

If you are already a .NET developer, you will be in familiar territory after learning XAML and its features. The correspondence of XAML to classes in .NET is a major strength, and the tool support built around XAML for designers and developers is strong and growing.

Summary

This chapter began with a discussion of Silverlight and its major competitors. Next, it covered how to create a new Silverlight application in Visual Studio with a supporting web site, how to modify the user interface in Expression Blend, and finally, how to build and execute an application in Visual Studio. The next stop on our journey through practical Silverlight development takes us to XAML. Many of the core concepts needed to understand how Silverlight works are covered in the next chapter, including markup extensions, dependency properties, and previews of features such as data binding and styling applications.