Silverlight™ 3 Programmer's Reference

Chapter 1. Introduction to Silverlight

Silverlight 3, the third iteration of the Silverlight platform, continues to deliver on the promise of Adobe Flash-like and Flex-like rich Internet applications (RIAs) built using a standards-based, open approach with HTML and XAML using tools like Visual Studio 2008 and Microsoft Expression Blend. Silverlight 3 adds more excitement to RIA development with the inclusion of a subset of the Base Class Libraries (BCLs) from the .NET Framework, new user interface controls, and new libraries for building line-of-business applications. The result is that not only do you have the rich, XAML markup to describe expressive user interfaces, but you also have the power of the .NET Framework and your language of choice (C#, VB, etc.) to build Silverlight applications. Even with the .NET Framework libraries, Silverlight still retains the cross-browser and cross-platform compatibility that it has had since the beginning. This includes Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Macintosh, and, through the Mono Project, various Linux distributions. You can build a Silverlight application and run it in a Safari Web browser on an Apple Macintosh, while being served up from an Apache Web Server running on Linux. There is a lot to learn about Silverlight, and you'll gain more and more insight with each chapter in this book.

This chapter does two basic things:

• It gives you an introduction to Silverlight.

• It sets the groundwork, with the essentials on creating ...