Silverlight team's blog

RadControls for Silverlight 2.0 World Premier Webcast

Silverlight Team — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 23:51:00 GMT

Join Telerik Chief Technical Evangelist Todd Anglin as he introduces you to Telerik's brand new suite of components for Microsoft's Silverlight 2.0. This is the first time the RadControls for Silverlight 2.0 have ever been shown in public, so don't miss your opportunity to be among the first to see what Telerik is doing in the Silverlight space. Anyone considering Silverlight development in 2008 should attend this event to learn how leading .NET UI component vendor Telerik is going to make it easy to develop professional applications on this brand new framework with very little code.

The webcast will be on Friday, December 14, 2007 3:00 PM - 3:30 PM EST

Registration is free, space is limited - follow this web address:
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/490004761

PS: For those of you who can not participate in the live online webcast - a video will be available later on our website (www.telerik.com) - so stay tuned.

The Minesweeper Game Done in Silverlight 1.1

Silverlight Team — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 16:44:00 GMT

Silverlight is a Blast!

And instead of trying to convince you, we present you a well-known game in its silverlit clothes. The minesweeper! It adds to other games that in the past several weeks have shown the ease with which you can use Silverlight to create online interaction and games. It uses no fancy frameworks but underlines the simplicity and straightforwardness of Silverlight development.

The number of mines and the rows/columns are configurable. To mark a mine - instead to click with the right mouse button, click with the left mouse button while holding the CTRL or SHIFT key.

Try the game:

http://blogs.telerik.com/demos/minesweeper/

Get the code here:

The Minefield Project

Concepts presented:

- Controls in ver. 1.1: Control creation and reusing.

- Storyboards: Animations and reversing storyboards.

- Auto-Finding: Harness the power of reflection and forget about XAML to fields binding.

- Event Handling: Mouse and custom events galore!

- Function call delay: A simple call delay that fits in nicely wherever it is needed.

Enjoy!

Shortcut on Silverlight 1.1

Silverlight Team — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 19:30:00 GMT

Here at Telerik we are constantly working with the new cutting edge technologies. As Silverlight 1.1 alpha hit the road we were keen to research all the new things we can do with this new technology ...

But there was one little problem - the lack of help and documentation. Our experience with WPF help us a lot to get into the new technology, but Silverlight is a new platform and it has its differences from WPF.

So when we were contacted by the O'Reilly to write a book for Silverlight 1.1 we decided that this will be a very good opportunity for us, and we will be able to help a lot of people which want to get faster into this new Silverlight platform.

The result - this more than 70 pages shortcut, will help you to get started with Silvelight. It explains the main concepts behind Silverlight - working with XAML, animations, web services and ofcourse, there is a step by step example about how to create your own custom control. Here is the short table of contents:

Understanding Silverlight 1.1
What is Silverlight 1.1?
An overview of RIA
Working with Silverlight 1.1
Building applications and custom controls with Silverlight 1.1
Online resources

you can purchase and download the book from the O'Reilly online catalog.

Thanks to Adam Kinney and Jessy Liberty from Microsoft - they helped us a lot with polishing everything out.

I hope you will enjoy reading the book - let us know what do you think about it.

Silverlight Game for Q2 Release

Silverlight Team — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 19:38:00 GMT

While working on the second release for 2007, Telerik decided to surprise its clients by creating a Silverlight game.
The idea was simple. A registered user enters his or her weight and logs in. This weight contributes to the common goal which is to lift what is on the other side of the rope.

The game was developed using Silverlight 1.1 Alpha Refresh.
We had couple of concerns while developing it, though. First of all we did not know how many people have already installed the 1.1 plug-in. Also we were not sure if the current game was going to reach the popularity of the last. At the end, however, it proved that Silverlight has been adopted by quite few people.

One very important decision we needed to make was how to represent a single user from the database - using a XAML object or a .png image. After some tests and research we decided to stick with the .png image. The reason is because 3000+ XAML elements were taking over 260MB of RAM, while using .png images made the memory consumation to drop to the acceptable 37MB.

After finding solution to the above problem, the rest was quite easy. We developed few user controls(button, person, tooltip) which accelerated the development extremely. The main disadvantage which we found afterwards was a problem with the caching mechanism(same as flash/flex). When the user loads the game for the first time he or she downloads the .dll file locally and on the second visit, the caching mechanism of the browser reuses the local .dll. In order to get the new .dll you need to clear the cache of the browser(alternatively you can hold SHIFT key and press the Refresh button of the browser).

How to Change the Silverlight Installation Message

Silverlight Team — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 16:40:00 GMT

NOTE: From the very beginning I would like to state that this custom solution is temporary and will most probably change with the next release of Silverlight Plug-In.
There is no straightforward approach to changing the Silverlight Download logo.

However, a workaround exists.

1) Download the modified TelerikSilverlight.js and add it to your project

2) Within the Default.aspx of your project, reference TelerikSilverlight.js

<script type="text/javascript" src="TelerikSilverlight.js"></script>

3) Create a javascript function right bellow the previous line of code

<script type="text/javascript">
    function GetInstallHtml ()
    {
        var imgUrl = "http://www.telerik.com/images/editor/OverviewImages/SilverlightLogo.gif";
        var myInstallHtml = 'This is my custom text<br/>' +
                                        '<div style="width: 205px; height: 67px; background-color: #FFFFFF">' +
                                            '<img onclick="javascript:Silverlight.followFWLink({0});"' +
                                            'style="border:0; cursor:pointer" src="' + imgUrl + '"' +
                                            'alt="Get Microsoft Silverlight"/><br/>' +
                                        'This is my custom <a href="javascript:Silverlight.followFWLink({0});">link</a>.' +
                                    '</div>'
        return myInstallHtml;
    }
</script>

Resources:
Sample Default.aspx
TelerikSilverlight.zip

RadControls for Silverlight 1.0 Final Release

Silverlight Team — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 17:16:00 GMT

Just hours after Microsoft announced the availability of the final version of Silverlight 1.0 (http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2007/09/04/silverlight-1-0-released-and-silverlight-for-linux-announced.aspx), Telerik made RadControls for Microsoft Silverlight officially available.

Being the first vendor to offer third-party UI controls for Silverlight, Telerik is dedicated to closely follow the release schedule of Microsoft and roll-out its tools immediately after the respective updates/releases of the Silverlight framework.

Telerik RadControls for Microsoft Silverlight are a new generation of UI controls for building Rich Interactive Applications based on Microsoft Silverlight 1.0. The product introduces the notion of control-based development, which is originally missing in the framework, and requires no JavaScript and XAML coding.

The toolset includes 5 fundamental building blocks (Button, Image, Media, Label, CustomElement) and 3 composite controls (MediaPlayer, StripLayoutPanel and Cube).

RadControls for Silverlight is provided free of charge to all registered users. For more information, please visit:

RadContols for Silverlight overview:
http://www.telerik.com/products/silverlight/overview.aspx

Download:
http://www.telerik.com/products/silverlight/license-agreement.aspx

Forum:
http://www.telerik.com/community/forums/allthreads/b312H-cct.aspx

Microsoft Tafiti, a Showcase for Silverlight and an Experimental Search Service

Silverlight Team — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 18:15:00 GMT

Microsoft has just released a new search service, called Tafiti.

From the very beginning should be clarified that Tafiti is more of an example of what Silverlight is capable of rather than a real search engine product. It is based on the 1.0 RC plug-in of Silverlight and uses the Live Search API, which means that you will get the same results as if you search in MSN or Live.
Tafiti is rich, interactive and provides the user with some very nice features which the ordinary searches lack. As it name implies, Tafiti in Swahili means "do research".

Shelf

The shelf is a space on the screen where you can place search results and label them. The user is allowed to place anything from books to RSS feeds. There is no limit of the items in the shelf. Tests show that the shelf is looking good even with 250 items in it.

Carrousel Bar

It allows you to switch among different types of search results(books, RSS feeds, web, images and news).

Filter

If you want to narrow your search, the filter functionality of Tafiti is doing a wonderful job.

Tree view

I think the tree view is the feature that shows in great details the capabilities of Silverlight. Described in few words, each branch is a different search result. The tree rotates in a 3D perspective and the speed of the rotation can be controlled using the left and right handle. Also the size of the result cloud can be controlled with the slider bellow the tree.
The thing that "bothers" me is whether there is a real 3D simulation or it is a two-and-a-half-D motion. What do you think?

Unique URL

Tafiti supports unique URL functionality. This means that you can share your searches with other people by simply copy-pasting the URL bar of the browser or sending it as an e-mail.

Conclusion

As I said before Tafiti uses both Microsoft Silverlight and Live Search and works in Internet Explorer, Firefox, or Safari on Windows XP (SP2), Windows Vista , and Mac OS X. Tafiti is not something revolutionary in the field of search engines. Even if it wants, it cannot replace the good old Google. In one thing I am sure though, applications like Tafiti will continue to push the limits of Silverlight in every possible aspect. Here at Telerik, we are doing our best to squeeze the most out of Silverlight. Our control suite for Silverlight 1.0 is currently in its Release Candidate stage. You can find more about the suite here. Also we are actively working on the development of Silverlight 1.1 control suite.

Silverlight 1.0 RC is out

Silverlight Team — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 11:31:00 GMT

Silverlight 1.0 RC is out, and so is the refresh of the Telerik Silverlight suite.

We have been working hard the past week to implement the compatibility changes between the 1.0beta and 1.0RC plugin. Check out our Silverlight demos online and let us know if you encounter any problems. The refreshed suite is also available for free download in your accounts.

Integrate RadMediaPlayer's Telerik theme into Microsoft Expression Media Encoder

Silverlight Team — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 19:52:00 GMT

Before we step to the actual integration, there are few requirements that need to be met.

Download and install RadControls for Silverlight
Download and install Microsoft Expression Media Encoder
Download and unzip TelerikThemePackage.zip (The archive contains 3 files - Default.html, player.xaml and preview.jpg)

I assume that you have successfully completed the above three tasks.

1. Go to where you have installed Microsoft Expression Media Encoder. Then navigate to the Templates folder. Usually this is C:\Program Files\Microsoft Expression\Media Encoder 1.0\Templates\en\

2. Create a copy of any of the folders (E.g. "Pilot") and rename it to Telerik

3. Replace Default.html, player.xaml, preview.jpg from the newly created "Telerik" folder with the three files from the TelerikThemePackage.zip archive.

4. Open Microsoft Expression Media Encoder and import a video of your choice

5. Choose "Telerik" theme from the Template drop down menu.

6. Encode your movie by clicking the Encode button

7. When done finished encoding, Microsoft Expression Media Encoder will automatically give you a preview of the media player.