Book Video Training: Silverlight 101

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This textbook (PDF) and video series demonstrates and explains the concepts behind building rich interactive applications using Silverlight. Covers 1.0 and 1.1 Alpha. Will be released to LearnVisualStudio.NET subscribers as we finish each chapter.

The following videos are available for this series:

Silverlight 101 - Lesson 1 - Video 1 - Silverlight Overview
This is the first in a series of videos that correspond to the Silverlight 101 textbook lessons available at LearnVisualStudio.NET. These videos were NOT intended to be used independent of the textbook lessons. We'll take a quick look at a simple Silverlight application to provide a quick overview of the basic concepts of Silverlight which we'll expand and build on over the course of the rest of the lessons and videos in this series. This video will show how to create a "hello world" Silverlight application using the createSilverlight.js file from the Silverlight SDK and will use Notepad to compose the HTML, the XAML and so on.
Silverlight 101 - Lesson 1 - Video 2 - XAML Overview
In this video we're going to take a look at the basic structure of XAML from a silverlight perspective. XAML has many potential uses, but is best known till now for its use in developing Windows Presentation Framework user interfaces and similarly Silverlight user interfaces as well as defining some behavior like animation. If you've already read Lesson 1 or watched the previous video, you should understand the relationship between the XAML and the rest of the pieces of a silverlight application. Simply put, the XAML you create is declarative code, an XML syntax, that defines the graphical elements. Its interpreted by the silverlight plugin to display those graphical elements on the screen. Interactivity is defined in imperative code, like javascript, VB or C#. This allows a seperation between the interactivity designer, who is typically a graphic designer who also has a sense of sense of motion and interaction between the user and the application and a developer who brings the a
Silverlight 101 - Lesson 1 - Video 3 - Silverlight Projects in Visual Studio 2008
This video is a mirror image of what we saw in the first video. However, this time we'll be using Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 and the "Microsoft Silverlight Tools Alpha Refresh for Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2" released in September of 2007 to create a new Silverlight project. We'll also look at the anatomy of a Silverlight project in Visual Studio and note how its different. If you want to follow along, you'll need to create your own Silverlight development environment ... please refer to video five in lesson 1 for a walkthrough on the steps required to get started.
Silverlight 101 - Lesson 1 - Video 4 - Linking a Silverlight Project to an ASP.NET Project in Visual Studio 2008
One of the reasons why its makes a lot of sense to use Visual Studio 2008 to create your Silverlight applications is because it makes it extremely simple to then consume those silverlight applications in ASP.NET 2.0 applications. The mechanism that you use to do this is through Linking, which we'll demonstrate in this video. We'll be using the Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 and the "Microsoft Silverlight Tools Alpha Refresh for Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2" add-in.
Silverlight 101 - Lesson 1 - Video 5 - Setting up a Silverlight Development Environment
In this video we'll follow the steps in the lab which explains how to set up an environment for Silverlight development. The steps are fairly straight forward, so if you're used to working with ISO files and installation programs from the web, you probably don't need this video. In case you get stuck, hopefully some of the tips here will be useful. There's basically three steps: 1) Downloading & Installing the Silverlight 1.1 alpha september refresh plugin 2) Downloading & Installing Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 3) Downloading & Installing Silverlight 1.1 Alpha Tools for Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 The download locations for each of these files are available in the workbook. Also, we'll be replacing this video often as new versions of Silverlight and the other development tools are released, so if you're watching this in 2008 or later you probably will want to visit learnvisualstudio.net and check for a new version of both this file and probably most of Silverlight related con
Silverlight 101 - Lesson 2 - Video 1 - Working with the Canvas
In this video we explain and demonstrate the Canvas's relation to the Silverlight Control Host, Positioning items on the canvas and the concept of the ZIndex.
Silverlight 101 - Lesson 2 - Video 2 - Defining Silverlight Shapes and Strokes in XAML
In this video we talk about some of the specific properties of simple shapes like the Rectangle, Line, Polygon and Polyline, and explore properties of the (StrokeStartLineCap, StrokeEndLineCap, StrokeDashArray, DashOffset and StrokeDashCap), and finally talk briefly about the StrokeMiterLimit property on polygons.
Silverlight 101 - Lesson 2 - Video 3 - Working with Fills and Brushes
In this video we talk about Fills and the Brushes that love them. We look at the SolidColorBrush, LinearGradientBrush, RadialGradientBrush, ImageBrush and spend a little time talking about the FillRule property of polygons.
Silverlight 101 - Lesson 2 - Video 4 - Understanding Opacity and Opacity Masks
Just as advertised, we should a couple of different techniques to adjust the Opacity of shapes (in simple scenarios) and then graduate on to Opacity Masks using various brushes in conjunction to the OpacityMask.
Silverlight 101 - Lesson 2 - Video 5 - Working with Transforms
In this video we provide a quick rundown of the available Transforms in Silverlight, including the RotateTransform, ScaleTransform, SkewTransform and TranslateTransform.
Silverlight 101 - Lesson 2 - Video 6 - Understanding the TextBlock Element
In this last video for lesson 2, we talk about Textblock properties, Runs and Linebreaks, TextWrap and using brushes and transforms with TextBlocks.
Silverlight 101 - Textbook Lesson 1
This PDF file can be opened with Adobe Acrobat Reader. It is a 30-page document for Lesson 1 of the Silvewrlight 101 textbook and video series. This text book will contain reference, background, sample code, exercises and more for use in conjunction with the Silverlight 101 videos.
Silverlight 101 - Textbook Lesson 2
This PDF file can be opened with Adobe Acrobat Reader. It is a 60-page document for Lesson 2 of the Silvewrlight 101 textbook and video series. This text book will contain reference, background, sample code, exercises and more for use in conjunction with the Silverlight 101 videos.