I recently completed writing my book Silverlight Practice wich is dedicated to technology of the same name. It should be over 500 pages and focuses on learning good practices and team production. It is published by Pearson Education France and released February 2, 2010. I have not designed as a glossary of features but rather as a production guide and learning. He draws a sketch of the design of Silverlight applications, starting from the display list to loading external data in the design model MVVM through prototyping or organizational workflow.

The general idea of the book is to provide concrete examples downloadable for both designers and for developers. You can reserve a copy on the website of Pearson France here.

This book is for Web integrators, interactive designers, graphic designers and pure web developers unfamiliar platform. Net. It creates a bridge between development and design, to improve collaboration and productivity.

Its content takes into account the specificities of developers and designers of interactive forms of complementary exercises. The C # is chosen as the only logical language for clarity. The theory, examples and exercises (downloadable) are progressive and can be a learning base for non-developers. However this is not a book for beginners Web, but to those who have acquired bases on other technologies.

Here is the summary of the book:)

Part I. Approach Silverlight

1. Introduction
1.1 What does Silverlight?
1.2 In. Net 1 to Silverlight
1.3 The benefits of Silverlight
1.4 The Expression Studio
1.5 Positioning business
1.6 Development language and choice

2. The couple XAML / C #
2.1 XML
2.2 XAML, a declarative language powerful
2.3 The fundamentals of C #

3. HelloWorld
3.1 A first Silverlight application
3.2 Architecture of a solution
3.3 The root container
3.4 Add Text
3.5 Test and compile

4. A site full screen in 2 minutes
4.1 type projects website
4.2 Creating resizable containers
4.3 The component button
4.4 Add interactivity
4.5 Files deployed

5. The visual and logical tree
5.1 Components Visual
5.2 Principle of Nesting
5.3 Adding children to the display list
5.4 Remove objects from the visual tree
5.5 Exchange index

Part II. Interactivity and graphic design

6. Animation
6.1 Introduction
6.2 Animating with Expression Blend
6.3 Managing acceleration
6.4 Animating with C
6.5 The transformations on
6.6 Animate particles

7. Buttons
7.1 Create a video player
7.2 Visual Style
7.3 Generic Button
7.4 The manager of visual states
7.5 The switch or button ToggleButton

8. Interactivity and event model
8.1 The foundations of event model
8.2 withdrawn listening to an event
8.3 The weak coupling in practice
8.4 Event Propagation
8.5 The behavior

9. The basics of 3D projection
9.1 The 3D environment
9.2 The properties of 3D
9.3 The camera
9.4 Introduction to matrices

10. Prototyping dynamic SketchFlow
10.1 The Environment
10.2 Simple Prototype
10.3 The player SketchFlow
10.4 Interactivity
10.5 Interface rich

Part III. Designing rich applications

11. Graphic Resources
11.1 What is a resource
11.2 brushes
11.3 Fonts
11.4 Styles and component models
11.5 The model Slider
11.6 connections
11.7 The model ListBox

12. Custom Components
User Control 12.1
12.2 Connection Box
12.3 Custom Controls

13. Media and Data
13.1 Loading media
13.1.1 Dynamic loading of images
13.1.2 video formats and modes of dissemination
13.1.3 A simple video player
13.1.4 Dynamic Loading videos
13.2 Design MVVM
13.2.1 Principles
12.2.2 Model
12.2.3 Model-View
13.3 Loading Data
13.3.1 The object WebClient
13.3.2 Introduction to LINQ
13.3.3 Lambda Expression
13.3.4 Consuming XML with LINQ
13.3.5 Loading a JSON feed
13.3.6 Cross Domain Security

Hi, I recently have to find a solution create two customs controls

I recently needed controls customizable type ColorPicker ColorChooser and, finding none, I have designed from scratch, here's a demo.

They are in beta but I think provide a final version by November 15. In the meantime, if you want to test those controls and download the dll to test in SL3 is here.

Ps: the Silverlight plugin for wordpress provided by Tim Heuer, is powerful and useful, so thank you to him, I will only use this solution from now.

I've just released V2 of ProxyrenderTransform. ProxyRenderTransform use extensions methods to allow easy access to renderTransforms nodes. These are difficult to target by C# when they are not named. If you add the reference ProxyRenderTransform.dll, you will easily reach RenderTransform for any FrameWork element by extensions methods :

• SetX / GetX
• SetScaleX / GetScaleX
• SetRotate / GetRotate
• SetSkewX / SetSkewY

You can get PropertyPath corresponding the way Blend create RenderTransformGroup via static properties

• _SCALE_X_PATH // (UIElement.RenderTransform).(TransformGroup.Children)[0].(ScaleTransform.ScaleX)
• _SCALE_Y_PATH
• _SKEW_X_PATH
• _SKEW_Y_PATH
• _ROTATE_PATH
• _TRANSLATE_X_PATH
• _TRANSLATE_Y_PATH

You can also get reference to transform nodes themselves

• GetScaleNode
• GetTranslateNode
• GetRotateNode
• GetSkewNode

there's an example below :

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void Page_Loaded(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
//any FrameworkElement can now have direct access to his RenderTransform
rec.SetX(605);
Debug.WriteLine( rec.GetX());
//rec.SetX(105);
//rec.SetRotate(60);
//rec.SetScaleX(2);
 
dp.Interval = TimeSpan.FromMilliseconds(10);
dp.Tick += new EventHandler(dp_Tick);
dp.Start();
}
 
void dp_Tick(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
double newX = (double)rec_Copy.GetX() ( 500 - (double)rec_Copy.GetX() ) * .2;
rec_Copy.SetX(newX);
}

In that release, you will have access to 3D projection plan too...

You can get library under MS-PL licence on Code Plex here.
Don't hesitate to send me an email or post a comment if you encounter bugs or difficulties when you use it

Recently i needed to get static method contained by a Class to display their visual result.
Indeed The idea was to display Robert Penner's Equation used by tweened. For doing such task you just have to use Reflection Api provided by Silverlight Framework that you can find in System.Reflection package. You will find the code I used in this article.

First it is the code for the UserControl TweenedEquationThumb :

using System;
using System.Windows;
using System.Windows.Controls;
using System.Windows.Documents;
using System.Windows.Ink;
using System.Windows.Input;
using System.Windows.Media;
using System.Windows.Media.Animation;
using System.Windows.Shapes;
using Tweened;
using System.Diagnostics;
 
namespace TweenEquationSlideShow
{
	public partial class TweenedEquationThumb : UserControl
	{
        public Func TweenEquation;
        double EndValue;
        double StartValue;
        double BaseValue;
        Tween showTween = new Tween();
 
        public TweenedEquationThumb(Func tweenEquation, double endValue, double startValue, double baseValue)
        {
                // Required to initialize variables
                InitializeComponent();
                TweenEquation = tweenEquation;
                StartValue = startValue;
                EndValue = endValue;
                BaseValue = baseValue;
                TweenDoubleDescription tdc = new TweenDoubleDescription(animPath,         TweenableProperties.Left, TweenEquation, 2, 180, 20);
                 tdc.Definition = 200;
                showTween.AddSequences(tdc);
                showTween.TweenCompleted += new Tween.StoryboardComplete(showTween_TweenCompleted);
                Loaded += new RoutedEventHandler(TweenedEquationThumb_Loaded);
 
        }
 
        void showTween_TweenCompleted(Tween sender, object freeReference)
        {
            sender.Stop();
        }
 
        void TweenedEquationThumb_Loaded(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
        {
            MouseLeftButtonDown += new MouseButtonEventHandler(TweenedEquationThumb_MouseLeftButtonDown);
            DrawCurve();
        }
 
        void TweenedEquationThumb_MouseLeftButtonDown(object sender, MouseButtonEventArgs e)
        {
            showTween.Start();
        }
 
        private void DrawCurve()
        {
 
            double ecart = Math.Round((double)1/200, 3);
            Debug.WriteLine("ecart :: "+ecart);
 
            for (int i = 0; i < 200; i++)
            {
                double currentTime = ecart * i;
                double XTimeValue = currentTime * 180;
                double YValue = BaseValue + (double)Math.Round(this.TweenEquation(currentTime, StartValue, EndValue, 1) * 1000) / 1000;
 
                Ellipse bulle = new Ellipse();
                bulle.Width = 1.2;
                bulle.Height = 1.2;
                bulle.Fill = new SolidColorBrush(Color.FromArgb(0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff) );
                Curve.Children.Add(bulle);
                Canvas.SetLeft(bulle, 20+XTimeValue);
                Canvas.SetTop(bulle, YValue);
 
                EquationName.Text = TweenEquation.Method.Name;
 
            }
        }
     }
}

And here the code for Page.xaml.cs :

namespace TweenEquationSlideShow
{
	public partial class Page : UserControl
	{
		public Page()
		{
			// Required to initialize variables
			InitializeComponent();
			Loaded += new RoutedEventHandler(Page_Loaded);
		}
 
		void Page_Loaded(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
		{
			//In first time I get the TweenedEquations' Type
			Type myTypeEq = typeof(Tweened.TweenedEquations);
 
			var b = true;
			//Then I get All methods contained with GetMethods() wich returns me an array of MethodInfo
			foreach (MemberInfo memberInfo in myTypeEq.GetMethods())
			{
				//If methods' name begin with "Ease" 
				if (memberInfo.Name.IndexOf("Ease", 0) != -1)
				{
					//then I get each method
					MethodInfo myMethod = myTypeEq.GetMethod(memberInfo.Name);
					//And i create a new delegate with returned MethodInfo Object
					var myD = Delegate.CreateDelegate(typeof (Func<double ,double,double,double,double>),myMethod);
					//In fact we get the reference of that method without calling her
					//I create a new instance of TweenedEquationThumb with a first argument taking my Delegate
                    			TweenedEquationThumb tetb = new TweenedEquationThumb((Func</double><double ,double,double,double,double>)myD, -55, 0, 65);
                    			//if you want you could invoke each method using Invoke method of MethodInfo object
                    			if (b) CurveIn.Children.Add(tetb); 
                    			else CurveOut.Children.Add(tetb); 
                    			b = !b
                		}
            		}
        	}
	}
}</double>

Visual State Manager

Until now VisualStateManager was a Silverlight 2 projects feature( You will find french video on how it works here ) but now with the WPF ToolKit you will find here, it's possible to create Blend 2 projects including WisualStateManager. To get this feature I encourage you to go here where you will find full explanations. It's a very good news that permit to understand the direction blend 2 has taken. For myself I have tried it et all work perfectly but there's no a real integration into controls as we have in Silverlight 2 Projects. Of course you can create States in Controls but they are not defined by default in the Design view.