Basic Question on Silverlight Technology

The first element in the AppManifest.xaml is a Deployment node. This node defines the application and contains child AssemblyPart nodes.

As you can see the AssemblyPart nodes define what assemblies (DLLs) are contained within the .xap file, and give each of them a name.

Now, if you look back up to the top, you'll see the Deployment node has EntryPointAssembly and EntryPointType attributes. The EntryPointAssembly attribute defines which assembly defined below (as a child AssemblyPart node) is the main assembly (DLL) for the application. And, the EntryPointType attribute specifies the Class contained within the assembly (DLL), defined in the EntryPointAssembly attribute, is the main class that will be instantiated to start the application.

The Deployment node also has a RuntimeVersion attribute that defines the version of Silverlight the application is built for.

The .xap file contains an application manifest (AppManifest.xaml) file and all the necessary DLL's that are required by the application. The first DLL contained is the compiled version of you application and has the same name of your application. In my test I created an application names "SilverlightApplication1", so the DLL is named "SilverlightApplication1.dll". The rest of the DLL's are the dependancies the application requires.

App.xaml is a file used by Silverlight applications to declare shared resources like brushes, various style objects, templates etc. Also, the code behind file of app.xaml.cs is used to handle global application level events like Application_Startup, Application_Exit and Application_UnhandledException. (Similar to Global.asax file for ASP.NET applications)

When Visual Studio creates the app.xaml file automatically, it creates few event handlers with some default code. You can change the code appropriately.

For ASP.NET developers, the above code will look familiar. This is similar to the application level event handlers in Global.asax

Silverlight was formerly code-named "WPF/E."

When you create a Silverlight project using Visual Studio, it creates a default xaml file called "MainPage.xaml". This is just a dummy start page created by Visual Studio and it does not contain any visible UI elements. The default content of the MainPage.xaml file looks like this:

It was developed using a combination of C# and C++.

Yes, you can.

Deep Zoom provides the ability to interactively view high-resolution images in Silverlight. You can zoom in and out of images rapidly without affecting the performance of your application.

Deep Zoom provides smooth in-place zooming and panning.

DeepZoom Composer allows you to create high resolution image compositions, which are built for smooth Zooming and Panning. DeepZoom composer is absolutely free and is simple to use, just load in all your high resolution images and makes your composition on screen.

Deep Zoom Composer is a tool that allows preparing of images for use with the Deep Zoom feature in Silverlight 3.

Silverlight and Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) are 2 different products from Microsoft, but have lot of overlap. Silverlight is a sub set of WPF in terms of features and functionality.

Silverlight is a Microsoft technology, competing with Adobes Flash and is meant for developing rich browser based internet applications.

WPF is a Microsoft technology meant for developing enhanced graphics applications for desktop platform. In addition, WPF applications can be hosted on web browsers which offer rich graphics features for web applications. Web Browser Applications (WBA) developed on WPF technology uses XAML to host user interface for browser applications. XAML stands for eXtended Application Markup Language which is a new declarative programming model from Microsoft. XAML files are hosted as discrete files in the Web server, but are downloaded to the browsers and converted to user interface by the .NET runtime in the client browsers.

WPF runs on .NET runtime and developers can take advantage of the rich .NET Framework and WPF libraries to build really cool windows applications. WPF supports 3-D graphics, complex animations, hardware acceleration etc.

Silverlight uses a particular implementation of a XAML parser, with that parser being part of the Silverlight core install. In some cases, the parsing behavior differs from the parsing behavior in Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), which also has a particular implementation.

In table format:

Adobe Flash is the most popular competitor to Silverlight both supports browser plug-in and enables execution of rich content for the Web. Flash is not the new technology, which is already having long life span as compared to Silverlight. But it does not have huge community as expected; it may be cause of limited development tools, which are not kwon to most of the developers. Flash uses ActionScript as programming language and Flex as programming environment, which most of the developer are far from these technologies.

For ASP.NET developers to extend their websites using flash content is not so simples, they need to learning development environment as mentioned above like ActionScript and Flex, apart from that there is no way to generate Flash content using server-side .NET code, which means it's difficult to integrate ASP.NET content and Flash content

Silverlight aims to give .NET developers a better option for creating rich web content. Silverlight provides a browser plug-in with many similar features to Flash, but one that's designed from the ground up for .NET. Silverlight natively supports the C# language and uses a range of .NET concepts. As a result, developers can write client-side code for Silverlight in the same language they use for server-side code (such as C# and VB), and use many of the same abstractions (including streams, controls, collections, generics, and LINQ).

Microsoft ASP.NET AJAX, a set of JavaScript libraries built into ASP.NET 3.5, is available as a separate download for ASP.NET 2.0. Being an integral part of ASP.NET 3.5 and the AJAX Controls Toolkit for ASP.NET 3.5, now ASP.NET AJAX client-and server-side libraries are more integrated with Visual Studio 2008. The client-side library allows you to implement client-level processing such as processing and validating information entered by the end user, refreshing a portion of the web page, and developing rich, interactive user interfaces. You can also efficiently integrate the client-side library components with the server-side ASP.NET controls library in asynchronous mode. The key technology driver of ASP.NET AJAX is scripting. In general, script-based web applications face several challenges due to different browser settings (e.g., JavaScript is not enabled by default) on PCs and mobile devices. As a result, scripting is often not always the best strategy for enterprises to use to develop secured and scalable RIAs.

ASP.NET AJAX also supports limited features of RIAs and does not support effective multimedia integration, managed code-behind integration, or metadata and information management. Microsoft ASP.NET AJAX is a widely accepted model for building RIAs, but it is very likely that, having Silverlight as an option, .NET developers will migrate ASP.NET AJAX applications to Silverlight RIAs. Visit www.asp.net/ajax/ if you want to learn more about Microsoft ASP.NET AJAX.

There are 3 different types of layout controls provided by Silverlight

You have to add a layout panel to every xaml page we create. All other UI elements must be added inside one of the layout panels. Each page can have exactly one layout panel control.

XAML files are usually compiled rather than parsing on runtime. But it also supports parsing during runtime. When we build a XAML based project, you will see it creates g.cs extension in obi\Debug folder. Therefore, for every XAMl file you will find a g.cs file. For instance, a MainPage.XAML will have MainPage.g.cs file in obi\Debug folder. In short, in runtime you actually do not see the XAML file. But if you want to do runtime, parsing of XAML file it also allows that to be done.

The answer to this is no - a cross platform version of the .NET Framework is included in the 6 MB Silverlight 4 download, which means you do not need to have anything extra installed on the client in order to access Silverlight application in the browser.

The Silverlight version of the .NET framework includes the same CLR engine (same GC, type-system, JIT engine) that ships with the full .NET Framework, and a subset of the .NET Framework namespace libraries. You can see the full list of all classes/namespaces that are included by opening up the Object Browser when you create a new Silverlight application using Visual Studio.

Adobe Flex, Java FX, Adobe Flash are some of the other RIA technologies besides Silverlight.

RIA stands for Rich Internet Applications which are Web applications with rich user interfaces including media elements such as audio, video etc. You can think of them as being similar to powerful and rich desktop applications except that RIA applications are Web based.

Microsoft .NET RIA Services helps to simplify the n-tier application pattern by combining the ASP.NET and Silverlight platforms. The RIA Services provides a pattern using which you can write application logic that can run on the mid-tier and controls access to data for queries, changes and custom operations. It also provides support for data validation, authentication and roles by integrating with Silverlight components on the client and ASP.NET on the middle tier.

The user interface elements of Silverlight applications are defined in XAML files. The logic and functionality of Silverlight applications is implemented using managed NET code-behind files that share the same class with the XAML file.

Yahoo! Japan, NBC, Continental Airlines, NASA, Indian Premier League (yes, our very own IPL), and National Instruments are some of the organizations currently using Silverlight to enhance their businesses

Some high-end Windows specific features of WPF, such as real 3D, hardware-based video acceleration, and full document support, will not be supported in Silverlight. This is by design in order to serve Silverlight's cross-browser, cross-platform reach scenario that demands a light weight plug-in. That being said, Silverlight will offer a uniform runtime that can render identical experiences across browsers on both Mac OS and Windows.

Microsoft designed Silverlight with the ability to deliver high-fidelity experiences on the broadest set of system configurations. Some features, such as HD video, may benefit from the power contained in newer personal computers.

Silverlight is a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of media experiences and rich interactive applications (RIAs) for the Web.

Examples include:

For Windows Live services, Silverlight offers the ability to consume services and APIs more effectively.

Technically, Silverlight and ASP.NET are completely different. The major differences are listed below:

The most important fact to remember is what runs on the client, and what runs on the server, since this will affect almost every part of your system. Silverlight runs on the client, and ASP.NET runs on the server. They can work together and are compatible with each other, but this requires some time and effort.

This depends on different scenarios. Below are some common approaches:

Before going with this approach, please consider if the above approaches can solve your problem. Ask yourself the following questions:

If none of the above approaches is suitable, you may have to mix Silverlight content with ASP.NET. When using this approach, keep in mind that Silverlight can't call ASP.NET server side event handlers, and each post back (either partial or complete) will cause the Silverlight application to reload.

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