Pro Business Applications with Silverlight 5

C H A P T E R  2

An Introduction to XAML

Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML—pronounced zammel) is an XML-based declarative markup language used to represent a hierarchy of objects.

In Silverlight, XAML is primarily used to define the layout and contents of user interfaces. The use of XAML for defining user interfaces is not a Silverlight-specific concept, however. It actually has its origins in Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF); Silverlight emerged essentially as a subset of WPF designed for use on the Web (hence its early name of WPF/E, or WPF Everywhere, before being christened with the catchier “Silverlight”).

Despite being used to define user interfaces in Silverlight and WPF, this is not XAML's sole purpose. XAML was designed ...