Getting started with Silverlight 3

I am a little late to the party, but now is a better time than never to start talking about Silverlight 3. With this post I wanted to provide a little more than the standard getting started information. First I want to provide some detail information on the tools around Silverlight 3. Below are some details on the tools for developing in Silverlight 3.

Silverlight Tools for Visual Studio 2008 (download) 

The silverlight tools for Visual Studio 2008 is the installer to extend Visual Studio 2008 to develop Silverlight 3 applications. A few things have changed since Silverlight 2, the first is the installer itself. Microsoft is now using the new web platform installer 2.0 which makes for a nicer installation. Included with the tools is also the Silverlight SDK as well as the plug-in.

Additionally you will find a few new "Silverlight" project types. I will address those in a future post.

Also, just like the last version, Silverlight Tools for Visual Studio 2008 works with all paid versions of Visual Studio and for those who may not have Visual Studio already, can use the express editions to develop Silverlight 3 applications. You can download the express edition here.

My last note with the tools, this installation requires Visual Studio SP1, so make sure you have that before attempting to install Silverlight Tools.

Expression Blend 3 (download) 

Expression Blend has consistently went through major improvements in each version of Silverlight's releases and Silverlight 3 is no different. Expression Blend has really started to mature into a useful tool for designing Silverlight applications. It is the tool for designers to work directly with xaml, and new features such as "Sketchflow" has positioned Blend as a designer's tool for other phases of their workflow besides development.

I could rattle on for quite a while describing all the new features in Expression Blend 3, however, I will refrain from that on this post. I will say, that with Blend's new features for importing Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator files directly, and its new ability to design with artificial data, is a step into making it a "must" for designers and developers alike. Seriously, developers, do yourself a favor and give Blend 3 a shot, its amazing tool.

I will also add that Blend's SDK has also been released and developers should take a good look at it. I will most likely take a deeper dive into the SDK at some future post.

Silverlight Toolkit (download) 

Silverlight toolkit is a very important component of Silverlight development. The silverlight toolkit is a vehicle for Microsoft to provide the Silverlight community with reliable controls not available in the runtime itself. Since the runtime must remain as small as possible, the toolkit gives Microsoft the ability to release advanced tools for Silverlight development. It also gives Microsoft the ability to release updates to these advanced controls in a seperate release cycle than Silverlight's runtime which gives their team some flexibility.

The toolkit not only contains standard issue controls, but special controls for charting, navigation,  and data driven controls, but also contains a complete series of theme oriented templates for existing controls.

There is a great site to preview some of the controls here.

Deep Zoom Composer (download) 

MSDN defined Deep Zoom as,

Deep Zoom provides the ability to interactively view high-resolution images. You can zoom in and out of images rapidly without affecting the performance of your application. Deep Zoom enables smooth loading and panning by serving up multi-resolution images and using spring animations.

Deep Zoom Composer allows you to quickly import your own images, arrange and position them to your liking, and export the final output as either a Deep Zoom Image or Collection that can be fed into Silverlight's MutliScaleImage control.

There are alot of additional tools out there, its hard to mention them all, just to name a few there is CSLA for Silverlight, Silverlight Fx, Silverlight Contrib, and a ton more. If you want to post some of them in the comments, please feel free.

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