Foundation Expression Blend 4 with Silverlight

Foundation Expression Blend 4 with Silverlight takes you through your first steps in creating rich Internet applications (RIAs) using the latest release of Microsoft’s technology. You’ll explore features such as custom user controls that you can reuse throughout your projects and the media element that allows you to easily add sound and video to your applications. Silverlight 4 enables you to rapidly develop compelling, cross-platform RIAs using the extensive .NET 4 libraries, the powerful, design friendly Blend 4 integrated development environment (IDE), and an enhanced workflow that allows designers and developers to work on the same set of files at the same time. At the end, you’ll put everything you have learned together to create a sample Silverlight 4 website.

Whether you’re an experienced .NET or web developer, or you’re just starting out, this book will provide you with all you need to create RIAs with Expression Blend 4.

• Develop stunning RIAs in a short time using Blend 4 and Silverlight 4.
• Learn basic object-oriented programming principles.
• Get familiar with the Blend 4 development environment.

What you’ll learn

• Learn the Blend 4 and Visual Studio 2010 IDEs.
• Learn how to create stunning animations using Silverlight 4 Storyboards and incorporate video and sound into your RIAs with the Silverlight MediaElement.
• Learn how to develop quickly and efficiently using Silverlight 4’s reusable resources such as UserControls, ControlTemplates and DataTemplates.
• Learn about the Visual State Manager and the State panel in Blend 4 to easily add MouseEnter and MouseLeave states to your UserControls.
• Put everything you have learned together to create a sample Silverlight 4 website.

Who this book is for

Web designers and developers wanting to learn Expression Blend 4 from the ground up. Those who have a background in the development of RIAs and want to learn this new technology.

Table of Contents

1. Setting Up the Silverlight Development Environment
2. The Blend Integrated Development Environment
3. C#, XAML, and Object-Oriented Programming
4. Layout Controls: Including the New Silverlight 4 Controls: Viewbox, RichTextBox, FlowDirection Property, and Improved Data Binding
5. Timed Storyboards: Creating a Newton Cradle Application
6. Using VSM and Blend 4’s State Panel to Create a Silverlight Media Player
7. Behaviors in Silverlight
8. The Silverlight MediaElement: Create a Video Player with a Custom UserControl, XML De-serialization, and Behaviors
9. Events and EventHandlers
10. Classes and Interfaces
11. Styles, Control Templates, and Custom UserControls
12. Writing a Custom Content Panel
13. Writing a Silverlight 4 Out-Of-Browser Application with Elevated Trust and the New Silverlight 4 COM API
14. Creating a Photobooth Application with the Silverlight 4 Webcam API
15. MVVM: Model-View-ViewModel
16. SketchFlow Prototyping
17. New Features of Silverlight 4