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Learning Silverlight 2 - More things you can do today.

if I were a bleeding edge Silverlight programmer who just cannot wait for release of Silverlight 2 and its documentation, here is what I'd do today:

  • Read Scott Guthrie's blog post  "First Look at Silverlight 2
  • Read Programming WPF (2nd ed) , especially these Chapters:  Layout, Input, Controls, Simple Data Binding, Styles, Control Templates, XAML
Programming WPF
by Chris Sells, Ian Griffiths

Read more about this title...

 

Another approach, which I think might be very profitable would be to recreate Scott's Digg application in WPF (or as much as you can). Little of what you learn will be wasted, and it is my personal suspicion that within a year (plus or minus six months) every Silverlight and WPF programmer will realize that they need to become proficient in both technologies (remember, Silverlight was originally called WPF/Everywhere).  That is not an official Microsoft position (in fact I just made it up) but now that I've said it, it makes enormous sense to me (see Scott's 8th tutorial).

Published 24 February 2008 07:26 AM by jesseliberty

Comments

# wisecarver said on 24 February, 2008 09:31 AM

Kudos ;-)

# DotNetKicks.com said on 24 February, 2008 09:32 AM

You've been kicked (a good thing) - Trackback from DotNetKicks.com

# BenHayat said on 24 February, 2008 01:41 PM

Jesse, this is what Scott said regarding the Panel support:

"built-in layout management panels (StackPanel, Grid, Panel, etc),"

Can you tell us if we are getting WrapPanel and Docpanel?

Thanks!

# jesseliberty said on 24 February, 2008 01:52 PM

I really want to clarify. But I can't.

But I want to. Does that count?

# wisecarver said on 24 February, 2008 02:24 PM

Hold your hand up Jesse...

I'm giving ya a High 5!

# BenHayat said on 24 February, 2008 02:44 PM

>>But I want to. Does that count?<<

Jesse, you're my hero and friend, and whatever you say, I accept (and yes it counts a lot). But you can't blame me for not trying or asking ;-)

BTW, I just got my Quad CPU HP up and running (Vista with SP1) and neither in FF nor in IE 7, I can see the area (like here) where I can leave a comment. It shows all blank. So now, I'm on my XP and I can put in comment. Do you know why this is happening?

..Ben

# Community Blogs said on 24 February, 2008 08:39 PM

Thomas Meinike sent me the first German SL link, and very cool... a xaml collection, and Jesse Liberty

# Joe1972 said on 25 February, 2008 12:24 AM

There was a hint on a recent Dot Net Rocks that the DockPanel would not make the cut - as it can be emulated with a Grid.  Wrap Panel - I would expect that to make it.

To keep WPF compatibility I think it would be quite easy to wrap up existing Panel support to fill in the gaps.  

# Daily Bits - February 25, 2008 | Alvin Ashcraft's Daily Geek Bits said on 25 February, 2008 10:34 AM

Pingback from  Daily Bits - February 25, 2008 | Alvin Ashcraft's Daily Geek Bits

# User Experience in Toronto and Las Vegas | robburke.NET said on 25 February, 2008 11:11 PM

Pingback from  User Experience in Toronto and Las Vegas | robburke.NET

# Jim Lynn said on 26 February, 2008 09:11 AM

I totally agree. The first thing I thought when reading ScottGu's posts was 'Why can't I download the beta NOW?' but the second was 'That looks so much more like WPF now' and I did exactly what you recommended - I followed the demo as a WPF application. Then when it wouldn't talk to digg (which Scott talks about) I just switched it to talk to a site I maintain and it all worked great. I even added a MediaElement to play movies from my site and display comments. Now my only frustration is that I can't just point people at a URL and have it work until 2.0 beta ships.

# Alan Cobb said on 26 February, 2008 06:13 PM

Jesse,

As you suggested, I translated Scott's Silverlight Digg app to WPF.  It was a bit more involved than I expected.  I wrote it up in a blog article with downloadable WPF source code for VS2008.

See: www.alancobb.com/.../TranslatingScottGusSilverlightDiggClientToWPF.aspx

Alan Cobb