This is the First news archive of Silverlight Zone and we have 14 new posts in this issue by various authors. Subscribe to the news feed and email digest to deliver it to your inbox. Also, follow us on Twitter @SilverlightZone for regular news tweet delivered to your twitter account. Find all the Silverlight related article links in this post.

 

 

Todays news in Silverlight-Zone:

  • Using Entity Framework in Silverlight with Visual Basic
  • A "little snake" leads us through the most important features of the Windows Phone 7
  • Silverlight 4, WPF 4 and Windows Phone 7 Multi-Touch Manipulation
  • Silverlight WebPart in Share Point 2010 using Client object model
  • Differences Between Silverlight and Silverlight for Windows Phone
  • Implementing the Model-View-ViewModel Pattern in a Windows Phone Application
  • Code Samples for Windows Phone
  • A Simplified Grid Markup Reloaded
  • Silverlight Cream for January 01, 2011 -- #1020
  • Animated Vertical Scrollable Content In Silverlight
  • The validation story in Silverlight (Part 2)
  • The validation story in Silverlight (Part 1)
  • Working with the Silverlight Rich Text Box control
  • SharpDropBox Client for .NET Windows Phone DropBox and Sterling

 

 

Using Entity Framework in Silverlight with Visual Basic

Posted: 02 Jan 2011 09:05 AM PST

A common requirement in building applications is the need to serialize objects and pass them across tiers between the server and the client. These objects typically hold references to each other, and managing this “graph” and tracking all the changes so that they can be properly persisted to the database can get complicated quickly.

In Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4.0, the Entity Framework team added a template for generating self-tracking entities (STEs) to provide an easier experience building N-tier applications that need to send entities with changes between tiers. These entities are business objects that have no direct dependency on the Entity Framework, but know how to track their own changes, so that they can later be re-attached to an ObjectContext and the changes correctly merged back.

A "little snake" leads us through the most important features of the Windows Phone 7

Posted: 02 Jan 2011 09:55 AM PST

This article talks about the development of an application for the new Windows Phone 7 platform: Snake Mobile. The idea of the game is only an opportunity to demonstrate that in a simple application like the Snake, we find a lot of the basic concepts of the development for the Windows Phone 7 platform.

Great thing is, this has been developed by a 15 years old boy. He did a great job. Must read.

Silverlight 4, WPF 4 and Windows Phone 7 Multi-Touch Manipulation

Posted: 02 Jan 2011 09:00 AM PST

Silverlight / Windows Phone 7 behaviors and WPF 4 samples implementing Multi-Touch Manipulation (Gestures) and Inertia. Project hosted in CodePlex where it uses code and libs from "Microsoft Surface Manipulations and Inertia Sample for Microsoft Silverlight". The current stable version v0.6.2 is available for download.

Silverlight WebPart in Share Point 2010 using Client object model

Posted: 02 Jan 2011 05:59 AM PST

In this article we will walkthrough to create Silverlight WebPart and deploy to SharePoint 2010 sites. We will fetching list items using client object model and bind to the Silverlight datagrid. A good post by Dhananjay.

Differences Between Silverlight and Silverlight for Windows Phone

Posted: 02 Jan 2011 04:19 AM PST

This topic describes feature implementation differences between Silverlight on Windows Phone and Silverlight 3 on other platforms. So, before you start developing your Windows Phone 7 application, read this MSDN document to understand the implementation differences first

Implementing the Model-View-ViewModel Pattern in a Windows Phone Application

Posted: 02 Jan 2011 04:16 AM PST

In this walkthrough, you will build a simple application that implements the Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM) design pattern. MVVM is a way to separate your data from your user interface. MVVM allows developers to code data models, and designers to create user interfaces. In your application, the Model (data) will be a C# class, and the View (user interface) will be a XAML user control. The ViewModel, which is the link between the Model and the View, will also be a C# class. For more information about the Model-View-ViewModel design pattern, see the links at the end of this topic.

The application that you create in this walkthrough is a “game tracker” in which the user can keep track of their accomplishments in a video game. The user can store the number of items that they have collected and the levels that they have completed. A completed version of this application is available as a download. For more information, see Code Samples for Windows Phone.

Code Samples for Windows Phone

Posted: 02 Jan 2011 04:15 AM PST

This page lists a set of code samples for developers of applications for Windows Phone. You can download the samples listed here to see how the Windows Phone APIs are used in practice or as a starting place for your own applications. New samples will be added to this page periodically, so check back often and see what’s new.

You will need to install Windows Phone Developer Tools to run these samples. To learn about or download Windows Phone Developer Tools see Installing Windows Phone Developer Tools.

A Simplified Grid Markup Reloaded

Posted: 02 Jan 2011 01:08 AM PST

Mister Goodcat had posted a nice article which simplifies the Grid positioning by using a extension utility class. Using that you can easily position any element in the Grid, like this: <StackPanel local:GridUtils.Cell="2,1,2"> Go and have a read.

Silverlight Cream for January 01, 2011 -- #1020

Posted: 01 Jan 2011 10:29 PM PST

Silverlight Cream #1020 for January 01, 2011 is up by Dave. Not that much contenst due to New year's day. In this issue we have contents from 3 Mikes (Mike Taulty, Mike Snow, and Mike Ormond). Though less nos. of posts but all are good. Must Read them.

Animated Vertical Scrollable Content In Silverlight

Posted: 01 Jan 2011 08:05 PM PST

In this post, Sharker Khaleed Mahmud will guide you creating a simple animated vertical sliding content. To do this he first started by creating a simple listbox and then did the binding using MVVM pattern and afterwards applied animation to the listboxitem content from code behind.

The validation story in Silverlight (Part 2)

Posted: 01 Jan 2011 11:07 AM PST

In the previous part of this series, we looked at the basic validation options we have available Silverlight (since version 3). The problem with the solutions we looked at is that they are mostly based on client-side validations. As you saw, the validation code, such as the attributes, assumes that all our validation needs are fulfilled with these attributes. In many cases, we’ll need to go to the server for a specific business rule.

The validation story in Silverlight (Part 1)

Posted: 01 Jan 2011 11:07 AM PST

If one feature is important when it comes to building line-of-business applications, it certainly is validation of business rules. At all levels throughout the application, we need to validate that the data that is entered by the users to verify that it meets the requirements. Some basic validation can be done by the database itself, but most (and in many cases, all) data that it trying to make its way to the database should be validated up front in order not to end up with corrupted data within the data store.

Working with the Silverlight Rich Text Box control

Posted: 01 Jan 2011 11:07 AM PST

Out of the box, the Rich Text Box control looks like a simple TextBox: you get the typical TextBox look, nothing more. However, under the covers, it offers us the ability to display formatted text, paragraphs, hyperlinks or inline images – and even more than that: you can actually use the Rich Text Box to display any UIElement (so if you want a DataGrid in your Rich Text Box, that’s entirely possible).

The Rich Text Box has a content property, Blocks, which is a collection of Paragraph elements (Paragraph derives from Block). These Paragraph elements can in turn contain elements that are derived from Inline, like Run (we know that one from the regular Text Box), Span, Bold, Italic, Underline, Hyperlink and the InlineUIContainer (which can contain UIElements).

SharpDropBox Client for .NET Windows Phone DropBox and Sterling

Posted: 01 Jan 2011 10:31 AM PST

SharpDropBox Client is a DropBox client for (at first) WP7. It caches files/directories in ISO storage, and also uses Sterling DB to metadata info so that it can easily do hash checks against DropBox making it download only when there are changes. It can also be used offline.

 

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