50145 - Microsoft Silverlight 2.0 for Developers

This three-day instructor-led course provides students with the knowledge and skills to develop Microsoft Silverlight 2 applications through a variety of available development tools and techniques. It also introduces the concept of separation between data and user interface (UI), the usage of XAML to create rich UI, and the integration of Silverlight applications with existing web projects.

After completing this course, students will be able to:

• Create a simple Silverlight 2 application based on the Visual Studio Silverlight application template
• Use existing user controls to create a user interface and customise their templates and styles to provide an optimal user experience
• Create Silverlight custom controls
• Use data binding mechanisms to populate controls with a data
• Consume existing WCF/Web services from Silverlight applications
• Communicate with the Silverlight hosting environment (HTML DOM)
• Use isolated offline storage in Silverlight applications
• Localise Silverlight applications
• Use DeepZoom in Silverlight applications

Module 1: Silverlight Development Basics
This module explains how to start developing Silverlight applications, which tools are needed, the purpose and motivation of XAML, which user controls are available out of the box, and how to use them.

Lessons
• Silverlight XAML
• XAML editing tools
• Silverlight application architecture
• “Hello World!” with Silverlight
• Available controls
• Handling and publishing events
• Transformations
• Animations

After completing this module, students will be able to:
• Create a new Silverlight application from the Visual Studio Silverlight project template
• Understand the motivation for XAML and tools for working with it
• Integrate existing user controls in Silverlight projects
• Publish and consume events in Silverlight applications
• Use transformations and animations in Silverlight applications

Module 2: Advanced Silverlight Development
This module explains how to access XAML objects from managed code, create new XAML objects dynamically, develop user controls and custom controls, create control templates and styles, use data binding, and customise user control states with the Visual State Manager.

Lessons
• Managing XAML objects
• Creating XAML objects from managed code
• Managing XAML objects from managed code
• Silverlight user controls
• Custom controls
• Control templates and styles
• Data binding
• Visual State Manager

Lab : Hands On #1* Layouts
• Code-behind data binding
• Data templates
• Consuming WCF services

Lab : Hands On #2* User controls
• XAML data binding
• IValueConverter

After completing this module, students will be able to:
• Access, create, and manage XAML objects from managed code
• Create user controls
• Create and apply styles and templates
• Consume WCF services
• Bind data to Silverlight controls from code and from XAML
• Customise the behavior of user controls with Visual State Manager
• Handle events in Silverlight applications

Module 3: Miscellaneous Topics
This module explains how a Silverlight application can access network resources, how to access HTML DOM objects from Silverlight applications and expose Silverlight functionality to the hosting HTML page, how to access isolated storage files, how to localize Silverlight applications, how to use DeepZoom in Silverlight applications and how to create interactive media applications.

Lessons
• Silverlight networking
• Resource management
• Silverlight application hosting
• Silverlight application initialisation parameters
• Silverlight application deployment
• Accessing the HTML DOM from Silverlight managed code
• Accessing Silverlight managed code from HTML DOM
• Creating an application splash screen
• Using isolated storage
• Localising Silverlight applications
• Deep Zoom
• Interactive media applications

Lab : Hands On #3* VisualStateManager
• Animations

Lab : Hands On #4 Self-training lab
• Creating a user control with WCF service communication functionality
• Custom ViewStateManager states and styles
• Integrating into the application built in the previous labs

After completing this module, students will be able to:
• Consume various network services from Silverlight application
• Use/manage application resources
• Access HTML elements on the Silverlight hosting page
• Expose managed functionality to the Silverlight hosting page
• Use isolated offline storage from Silverlight applications
• Localise Silverlight applications
• Pass initialisation parameters to Silverlight applications
• Show a custom splash screen while the application is loading
• Use DeepZoom features to extend Silverlight applications
• Create rich multimedia applications

This course is intended for both novice and experienced .NET programmers who have a minimum of six months development experience and basic Windows navigation skills.

Before attending this course, students must have:

• Working knowledge of C#, HTML, and JavaScript
• Highly recommended: web development knowledge (web development basics will not be covered in this course)