I blogged previously about some great Silverlight Tips of the Day that the Silverlight team has been releasing to help developers get started using Silverlight. Well, the team has released some new tips:

• Tip of the Day #28: - How to Implement a Custom Mouse Cursor
• Tip of the Day #29: - Creating a Transparent, Draggable Dialog with Rounded Corners
• Tip of the Day #30 - Fast Sprite Animation in Silverlight
• Tip of the Day #31 - How to Detect Alt, Shift, Control, Windows and Apple keys with Left Mouse Down in Silverlight
• Silverlight Terrain Tutorial Part 3 - Creating Smooth Tile Transitions using Opacity Masks
• Tip of the Day #32 - How to Declare a Custom User Control from a XAML Page
• Tip of the Day #33 - How to Scale your entire App and its Elements to your Browsers Size
• Tip of the Day #34 - How to Center your Silverlight Application in your Browser
• Tip of the Day #35 - Full Screen Mode Implementation
• Tip of the Day #36 - How to Create Reflections and Shadows for Images and Text
• Tip of the Day #37 - How to Dynamically Load and Display Silverlight Applications
• Tip of the Day #38 - How to Customize the Silverlight Install Experience
• Tip of the Day #39 - How to Create a Zoom Toolbar

I blogged previously about some great Silverlight Tips of the Day that the Silverlight team has been releasing to help developers get started using Silverlight. Well, the team has released some new tips:

• GameFest 2008 - Silverlight Game Programming
• Tip of the Day #21 - How to work with Shapes, Brushes and Gradients
• Tip of the Day #22 - How to add Sound Effects, Music and Video to your Silverlight App.
• Tip of the Day #23 -How to Capture the Mouse Wheel Event
• Tip of the Day #24 - How to Apply a XAML Template to a Class
• 3D Simulated Terrain Tutorials for Silverlight Games
• Terrain Tutorial Part 1 - Creating a Scrolling Map
• Tip of the Day #25 - How to Build the XAP File to the Debug/Release Folders
• Tip of the Day #26 - How to Change the Output XAP File Name.
• Tip of the Day #27 - How to Change the Mouse Cursor

If you have worked with XAML outside of Visual Studio, you have probably wished that you could get Intellisense in your code. Microsoft Expression Blend is one of main tools that Microsoft expects developers to use when working with XAML. Blend doesn't have Intellisense for XAML either.

Stefan Dobrev has developed an addin for Expression Blend that will provide the auto completion and Intellisense in Expression Blend.

Stefan's code is based off another great free XAML tool called Kaxaml. Kaxaml is a lightweight XAML editor that gives you a "split view" so you can see both your XAML and your rendered content (kind of like XamlPad but without the gigabyte of SDK).

XamlPad is a basic visual editor for Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML) and is installed with the SDK.  

Mike Taulty has uploaded a great collection of Silverlight 2.0 screencasts. These screencasts help you better understand the different aspects of developing with Silverlight as in the following: controls, File IO, networking, UI design, data-binding, interacting with HTML pages, and more. If you want to learn about Silverlight, this set of screencasts will definitely get you started in the right direction. 

1. Silverlight - Hello World
2. Silverlight - Anatomy of an Application
3. Silverlight - The VS Environment
4. Silverlight - Content Controls
5. Silverlight - Built-In Controls
6. Silverlight - Width, Height, Margins, Padding, Alignment
7. Silverlight - Using a GridSplitter
8. Silverlight - Grid Layout
9. Silverlight - StackPanel Layout
10. Silverlight - Canvas Layout
11. Silverlight - Databinding UI to .NET Classes
12. Silverlight - Simple Styles
13. Silverlight - Custom Types in XAML
14. Silverlight - Binding with Conversion
15. Silverlight - List Based Data Binding
16. Silverlight - Simple User Control
17. Silverlight - Templating a Button
18. Silverlight - Resources from XAP/DLL/Site Of Origin
19. Silverlight - Animations & Storyboards
20. Silverlight - Uploads with WebClient
21. Silverlight - Downloads with WebClient
22. Silverlight - Calling HTTPS Web Services
23. Silverlight - Calling Web Services
24. Silverlight - Making Cross Domain Requests
25. Silverlight - Using HttpWebRequest
26. Silverlight - File Dialogs and User Files
27. Silverlight - Using Sockets
28. Silverlight - Using Isolated Storage
29. Silverlight - .NET Code Modifying HTML
30. Silverlight - Using Isolated Storage Quotas
31. Silverlight - Calling JavaScript from .NET
32. Silverlight - Evaluating JavaScript from .NET Code
33. Silverlight - Handling HTML Events in .NET Code
34. Silverlight - Handling .NET Events in JavaScript
35. Silverlight - Calling .NET from JavaScript
36. Silverlight - Displaying a Custom Splash Screen
37. Silverlight - Passing Parameters from your Web Page
38. Silverlight - Loading Media at Runtime
39. Silverlight - Dynamically Loading Assemblies/Code
40. Silverlight - Reading/Writing XML
41. Silverlight - Multiple Threads with BackgroundWorker
42. Silverlight - Insert/Update/Delete with the DataGrid
43. Silverlight - Getting Started with the DataGrid
44. Silverlight - Embedding Custom Fonts

The Silverlight team has been releasing some Silverlight Tips of the Day to help developers get started using Silverlight. I thought that I would post them here as well as a reference for me and anyone else that is needing help with working with Silverlight.

This list will expand as more Tips are released from the Silverlight team.

 Silverlight Tips of the Day:

• Tip of the Day #1 - Setup and Installation of Silverlight Tools Beta 2
• Tip of the Day #2 - Creating a Silverlight Application Project with Visual Studio 2008
• Tip of the Day #3 - Silverlight Game Support, Limitations and Workarounds
• Tip of the Day #4 - Building the Game Interface Using the Grid Control
• Tip of the Day #5 - Timers and the Main Game Loop
• Tip of the Day #6 - Monitoring for Keyboard and Mouse Events
• Tip of the Day #7 - Creating Transparent PNG files for Silverlight
• Tip of the Day #8 - Silverlight Resources
• Tip of the Day #9 - Browser Resize – How to capture the size of your browser when it is resized
• Tip of the Day #10 - Dynamically loading and displaying images in Beta 2
• Tip of the Day #11 - Transparency - How to make your Silverlight control transparent
• Tip of the Day #12 - Full Implementation of a Silverlight Policy Server
• Tip of the Day #13 - How to Get an Images Dimensions in Silverlight
• Tip of the Day #14 - How to Right Click on a Silverlight Application
• Tip of the Day #15 - Communicating between JavaScript & Silverlight
• Tip of the Day #16 - StoryBoard versus DispatcherTimer for Animation and Game Loops
• Tip of the Day #17 - How to Animate a Rotating Image
• Tip of the Day #18 - How to Set Browser Cookies
• Tip of the Day #19 - Using Isolated Storage
• Tip of the Day #20 - How to Increase the Isolated Storage Quota for your App
GameFest 2008 - Silverlight Game Programming
Tip of the Day #21 - How to work with Shapes, Brushes and Gradients
Tip of the Day #22 - How to add Sound Effects, Music and Video to your Silverlight App.
Tip of the Day #23 -How to Capture the Mouse Wheel Event
Tip of the Day #24 - How to Apply a XAML Template to a Class
3D Simulated Terrain Tutorials for Silverlight Games
Terrain Tutorial Part 1 - Creating a Scrolling Map
Tip of the Day #25 - How to Build the XAP File to the Debug/Release Folders
Tip of the Day #26 - How to Change the Output XAP File Name.
Tip of the Day #27 - How to Change the Mouse Cursor
Tip of the Day #28: - How to Implement a Custom Mouse Cursor
Tip of the Day #29: - Creating a Transparent, Draggable Dialog with Rounded Corners
Tip of the Day #30 - Fast Sprite Animation in Silverlight
Tip of the Day #31 - How to Detect Alt, Shift, Control, Windows and Apple keys with Left Mouse Down in Silverlight
Silverlight Terrain Tutorial Part 3 - Creating Smooth Tile Transitions using Opacity Masks
Tip of the Day #32 - How to Declare a Custom User Control from a XAML Page
Tip of the Day #33 - How to Scale your entire App and its Elements to your Browsers Size
Tip of the Day #34 - How to Center your Silverlight Application in your Browser
Tip of the Day #35 - Full Screen Mode Implementation
Tip of the Day #36 - How to Create Reflections and Shadows for Images and Text
Tip of the Day #37 - How to Dynamically Load and Display Silverlight Applications
Tip of the Day #38 - How to Customize the Silverlight Install Experience
Tip of the Day #39 - How to Create a Zoom Toolbar
Tip of the Day #40 -1.05 != 1.05 - Peril with Floating Point Comparisons.
Tip of the Day #41 - Using Bookmarks in your Silverlight Application.
Tip of the Day #42 - How to Create a Web Service for your Silverlight App.
Tip of the Day #43 - Making it Snow in Silverlight.
Tip of the Day #44 - Silverlight-enabled WCF Services versus ASMX Web Services.
Tip of the Day #45 - Text Formatting with the TextBlock control
Tip of the Day #46 - Font Support in Silverlight
Tip of the Day #47 - How to Implement a Password Box
Tip of the Day #48 - How to Implement a Combobox
Tip of the Day #49 - How to Implement a Progress Bar
Tip of the Day #50 - Main Game Loop Revisited!
Tip of the Day #51 - How to Enable and Disable Controls
Tip of the Day #52 - How to Popup a Browser Window
Tip of the Day #53 - MessageBox is now Available in Silverlight 2
Tip of the Day #54 - How to Develop with Silverlight Tools for Free
Tip of the Day #55 - How to Apply Styles in Silverlight – Part I
Tip of the Day #56 - Accessing the HTML DOM from Silverlight.
Tip of the Day #57 - How to Dynamically Load a Silverlight Control within another Silverlight Control

Last Updated: 10/13/2008 06:00 PM
 

Microsoft Silverlight is a cross-browser, cross-platform, and cross-device plug-in for delivering the next generation of .NET based media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web.

Get Started Building Silverlight 2 Applications:

• Install Visual Studio 2008 then Install Silverlight Tools Beta 2 for Visual Studio 2008
  This add-on to Visual Studio 2008 allows you to use .NET to create Silverlight 2 Beta 2 Web sites. The Silverlight 2 Beta 2 Runtime and the Silverlight 2 Beta 2 SDK are installed as part of this install.
   
• Install Expression Blend 2.5 June 2008 Preview
  This is a preview version of Expression Blend for designing Silverlight 2 experiences.
   
• Install Deep Zoom Composer
  This tool allows you to prepare you images for use with the Deep Zoom feature in Silverlight 2.
   
  • Watch the Getting Started Video - This video will show you how to install the Silverlight tools then how to create your first Silverlight application.
     
  • Read Scott Guthrie's 8-part blog series -Scott's blog posts will walk you through the fundamentals of Silverlight 2 and will help you build a sample application along the way. Each step includes source code.
    • Part 1 - Creating a Hello Word with Silverlight 2 and VS 2008
    • Part 2 - Using Layout Management
    • Part 3 - Using Networking to Retrieve Data and Populate a DataGrid
    • Part 4 - Using Style Elements to Better Encapsulate Look and Feel
    • Part 5 - Using the ListBox and DataBinding to Display List Data
    • Part 6 - Using User Controls to Implement Master/Details Scenarios
    • Part 7 - Using Templates to Customize Look and Feel
    • Part 8 - Creating a Digg Desktop Version of our Application using WPF
       
  • Read Scott Guthrie's Blog Post: "First Look at Using Expression Blend with Silverlight 2" 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.
    • Part 1 - Introducing Blend to Silverlight Developers
    • Part 2 - Intensive Silverlight Programming and Expression Blend
    • Part 3 - Programming Silverlight With Blend: Data Binding and More
       
  • Watch the following introductory videos for Silverlight 2 which allows you to create rich interactive applications for the Web using Visual C# and Visual Basic.
    • Using Grids and Stack Panels
    • Binding Data
    • User Controls
    • Consuming data with web services
       
  • Read Scott Guthrie's blog post: "What's New in Silverlight Beta 2" that highlights what’s new in the UI and Control space, as well as the Media, Networking, and Data improvements that are part of Beta 2.
     
  • More Training Videos
    Watch dozens of videos for designers and developers, from the novice to the professional.
     
  • Read the Tutorials
    Learn more about Silverlight 2 with the regular tutorial series from Jesse Liberty.
     
  • Visit the QuickStarts to create your first application
    QuickStarts are task-based samples that provide an excellent way to learn the features of Silverlight. Each sample walks you through a feature and demonstrates how you can use that feature in your Silverlight-based applications.
     
  • Download a sample from the Gallery
    Upload and share your Silverlight sample in the Gallery.
     
  • Have a question? Visit the forums
    Developers and designers throughout the world post questions and answers to the Silverlight forums.
     
  • What's Different in Beta 2
    Read about the differences and breaking changes between Silverlight 2 Beta 1 and Beta 2.
     
  • Microsoft Silverlight 2 SDK Beta 2
    If you are not installing the Microsoft Silverlight Tools Beta 2 for Visual Studio 2008 which includes this SDK, you can download this SDK to create Silverlight Web experiences that target Silverlight 2 Beta 2. The SDK contains documentation, samples and other tools for building Silverlight applications.
     
  • Read the documentation
    The documentation on MSDN will help you understand Silverlight.