Pro Silverlight 2 in VB 2008

Silverlight is a lightweight browser plug–in that frees your code from the traditional confines of the browser. It’s a rules–changing, groundbreaking technology that allows you to run rich client applications right inside the browser. Even more impressively, it’s able to host true .NET applications in non–Microsoft browsers (like Firefox) and on non–Microsoft platforms (like Mac OS X). Silverlight is still new and evolving fast, and you need a reliable guidebook to make sense of it.

With four–color graphics and screenshots throughout, Pro Silverlight 2 in VB 2008 is the perfect reference: you’ll learn about the features that put Silverlight in direct competition with Adobe Flash, such as rich support for 2D drawing, animations, and media playback, and best of all, you’ll experience the plumbing of .NET and the design model of Windows Presentation Foundation through Silverlight—all of the same .NET technology that developers use to design next–generation Windows applications. Author Matthew MacDonald provides an expertly crafted tutorial written from professional developer to professional developer. You’ll learn to create rich media applications using Silverlight in the environment you’re most productive in–no matter what the target platform.

What you’ll learn

• Develop rich media applications using Silverlight and Visual Basic across browsers and platforms.
• Create a project, set up a layout, and use controls.
• Handle 2D drawing, animation, and media playback through Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF).
• Integrate web services support.
• Use Silverlight in conjunction with ASP.NET and its interactions with HTML.

Visual Basic 2005 and 2008 developers encountering Silverlight for the first time. No prior knowledge of WPF or ASP.NET is assumed.

Microsoft Silverlight is a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in like Flash that delivers rich interactive applications for the Web. Silverlight offers a flexible programming model that supports a number of different programming languages and techniques (making it cross-platform) and all major browsers (cross-browser support). There is lots of interest in Microsoft’s Flash killer and several conferences have seen heavy support for the tech.

There is little published information on this on the market now and we will be one of, if not the, first to market with info on Silverlight specifically for Visual Basic users. This book will leverage our existing success in the ASP.NET market to target developers interested in Silverlight from the development and .NET perspective, not just the designer. It’s a core angle into a hot topic supported by our brand history.

Matthew MacDonald is an author, educator, and MCSD developer who has a passion for emerging technologies. He is a regular writer for developer journals such as Inside Visual Basic, ASPToday, and Hardcore Visual Studio .NET, and he's the author of several books about programming with .NET, including User Interfaces in VB .NET: Windows Forms and Custom Controls, The Book of VB .NET, and .NET Distributed Applications. In a dimly remembered past life, he studied English literature and theoretical physics. Send e-mail to him with praise, condemnation, and everything in between, to [email protected].