Microsoft Silverlight extends and amplifies your existing development skills, empowering you to build new types of applications for the Web regardless of target platform or browser.

The Silverlight 4 beta release is now available. Review the Beta information page for more details.

Get Started Building Silverlight 3 Applications

1. Install the developer tools for Silverlight. If you don't have Visual Web Developer, download both using Web Platform Installer. This will install the SDK, developer runtimes, and Visual Studio project templates. If you already have Visual Studio, download the tools directly (the Silverlight 3 SDK is also available as a standalone download). For additional information, read the Overview and the Silverlight 3 Release Notes.

   

2. Install Microsoft Expression Blend 3 + SketchFlow Trial

   Expression Blend 3 + Sketchflow allows designers to graphically create UI’s for Silverlight 3 applications.

3. Install Deep Zoom Composer

   This tool allows you to prepare your images for use with the Deep Zoom feature in Silverlight 3.

4. Download Silverlight Toolkit

   This Toolkit is a Microsoft project containing Silverlight controls, components and utilities that can be downloaded and used in your Silverlight applications. It includes full source code, samples and tests.

5. Download .NET RIA Services

   Microsoft .NET RIA Services simplifies the traditional n-tier application pattern by bringing together the ASP.NET and Silverlight platforms. The RIA Services provides a pattern to write application logic that runs on the mid-tier and controls access to data for queries, changes and custom operations.

Start Learning Silverlight

1. Watch the Getting Started Video

   Tim Heuer introduces the concepts and tools needed to get started with Silverlight development from a developers perspective.
   (13:02)

2. Read Scott Guthrie's Silverlight 3 Announcement and Learn what's new in Silverlight 3
   

3. Read Tim Heuer’s 8-part blog series on getting started

   Tim’s blog posts will walk you through the fundamentals of Silverlight and will help you build a sample application along the way. Each step includes source code as well as C# and Visual Basic code for the completed application.

   1. Intro - An index to the series
   2. Part 1 - Really getting started with the tools
   3. Part 2 - Defining the UI Layout
   4. Part 3 - Accessing data
   5. Part 4 - Binding the data
   6. Part 5 - Integrating additional controls
   7. Part 6 - Polishing the UI with styles and templates
   8. Part 7 - Take the application out-of-browser

4. Read Scott Guthrie's Blog Post: "First Look at Using Expression Blend with Silverlight"

   Read Scott's blog post to understand the key features of Expression as you build a sample application, or watch Jesse Liberty's 3-part video series on the same subject.

   1. Part 1 - Introducing Blend to Silverlight Developers
   2. Part 2 - Intensive Silverlight Programming and Expression Blend
   3. Part 3 - Programming Silverlight With Blend: Data Binding and More

5. Watch the following introductory videos for Silverlight

   Silverlight allows you to create rich interactive applications for the Web using Visual C# and Visual Basic.

   1. Using Grids and Stack Panels
   2. Binding Data
   3. User Controls
   4. Consuming data with web services

6. Read Jesse Liberty's Tutorials

   Learn more about Silverlight with the regular tutorial series from Jesse.

Additional Learning Resources

Tim Heuer's Application Corner

Documentation

Books

Dynamic Languages

Quickstarts

Hands-On Labs

Whitepapers