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SilverLight 4.0 -An Introduction

Finally there is Light...The SilverLight that i  never provided much of my attention.Major reason ..I was under the illusion that it's an alternative for Flash, and Flash programming never fascinated me.
However as it's said it's never too late to learn  any technology, I am going to start with Silverlight and will concentrate web developer aspect of it.(No stand alone apps..or rather OOB(out-of-Browser) as it is called in Silverlight world.)


I am starting the series with an introduction to Silverlight.Here I'll cover Silverlight as a technoogy, its architecture, it's building blocks and some pros and cons of the technology.


Pre-Requisites for Learning Silverlight
1. XAML(eXtended Application Markup Language).Start Learning here


SilverLight-Programming Model
The Silverlight exposes API that defines its set of objects as object trees that enable  the user to populate the initial content of a Silverlight-based application by loading XAML, and then adjust the object tree at run time. 

The Silverlight object tree is exposed through the Silverlight plug-in, which is created as a plug-in instance on a Web page. Silverlight uses the COM plug-in model for Microsoft Internet Explorer, and uses the Netscape API plug-in model for other browsers. 

Silverlight can be programmed in two modes
1. Using managed API (This is  a subset of CLR used in normal .Net Programming)
2.Using Jaascript  API

In  either of the modes, for successfully running silverligt application, tall the necessary libraries and runtime environment(s) are downloaded on client machine and run from there.This is an advanced topic that requires a lot of explanationa and would be covered separately in Hosting scenarios.For now, just remeber silverlight is downloaded on Client machine and if it's not there, user would be prompted to download that from Microsoft site.

Managed API
when using managed API for  development,before the XAML is parsed, it is compiled by a markup compiler on the developer machine.


When the XAML is loaded and parsed at run time on the client, the parser creates an object tree from the markup. The object tree will have a UserControl  object as its root. 
Confused?..Let me explain it with an example
Consider a simple XAML below, when this is parsed, it will contain an instance of a specific UserControl  subclass: the Page class that is referenced in the x:Class attribute of the root element..




When interaction is made with Silverlight-based application at run time,  the Silverlight managed API is used  to access Page class. Beyond the Page root of the immediate object tree is the  Application object. The Application provides access to aspects of a Silverlight-based application that a developer wants to persist even if he/she replaces the entire page of the UI displayed in the Silverlight content area.

Application  class includes
1. Application-level resources
2. access to the package that contains the application parts
3. Objects that connect to the HTML DOM. For more information, see Application Model.

 I am not covering Javascript API in this blog, as that is rarely used and I don't plan to use it in near future.       

Thanks to MSDN for providing this excellent diagram to understand the Silverlight arhitecture



Hope this post  was useful.
Till next we connect..................
Happy Learning.















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