InfoQ Homepage Silverlight Content on InfoQ
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Async/Await Now Available for Windows Phone, Silverlight 4
An updated version of the Async Targeting Pack now provides asynchronous features to Silverlight 4 and Windows Phone 7.5. It also provides Portable Class Libraries targeting any of the supported platforms, including Silverlight 5 and .NET Framework 4.0.
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Async Features Now Available for .NET 4 and Silverlight 5
Microsoft announced the new Async Targeting Pack for Visual Studio 11 Beta, which will allow developers to use asynchronous programming features in .NET 4 or Silverlight 5 applications. These features were previously provided in the Async CTP, which is now deprecated.
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A Native of Silverlight with Full Hardware Access
Silverlight for Embedded is not based on .NET; it is a native technology that is programmed with XAML and C++. But it isn’t Windows 8/WinRT either, as it has full access to the underlying hardware and Win32 APIs.
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Avoiding Performance Pitfalls With XAML
The DependencyProperty and DependencyObject which form the building blocks for most XAML features come with a performance cost. An MSDN article “Optimizing C# for XAML Platforms” discusses this in detail along with ways to minimize its impact.
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Undo-Redo Frameworks For WPF and Silverlight
Undo and Redo are commands that are commonly expected by end users and, when well implemented, can improve an application's usability significantly. At least two libraries exist that can help WPF and Silverlight developers for this purpose - a recently announced Undo-Redo framework from Infragistics (CTP) and an open source library called Undo.
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Silverlight 5 Security: Designed for the Intranet
Silverlight was originally seen as a Flash killer, but Flash itself is being replaced by HTML5. It was also seen as a way of delivering cross-platform applications, but iOS made that a non-starter as well. Surprisingly it is thriving in areas that were supposed to be the domain of WPF such as internal business applications and Silverlight 5’s updated security model reflects this.
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PhoneGap Now Fully Supports WP7
PhoneGap now supports all native functionality on Windows Phone 7 being on par with iOS and Android.
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Silverlight 5 – Full 3D Stack, Better Binding, Enhanced Trust Mode
Silverlight 5 has finally been released by Microsoft, with a lot of new features such as full 3d stack with XNA Libraries, several binding related enhancements, unrestricted File System access and more.
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Silverlight Has Had a Bumpy Road. Will It Have a Smooth Transition to WinRT?
Microsoft had a great vision for Silverlight, a framework and a set of tools that would dominate the web development landscape, but it fell short of that. There are rumors there won’t be any Silverlight 6. If that happens, how easy is for the Silverlight developer to transition to WinRT? Some numbers show that it is pretty easy.
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WCF Data Services October CTP Updates OData Libraries, Adds Spatial Data Types
Microsoft has released the WCF Data Services October CTP, which targets .NET 4 and Silverlight 4. This update includes new libraries for OData version 3, and adds support for spatial data.
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Microsoft has Abandoned Silverlight and All Other Plugins in Metro IE
Though it has been hard, we have been trying to avoid reporting on rumors about the death of Silverlight for quite some time. As in all things, rumors tend to be exaggerated or out-right false. Unfortunately the end of Silverlight is no rumor; if Microsoft doesn’t change course it, as well as Flash and other plugin technologies, will be effectively unusable when Windows 8 is released.
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Windows 8 Replaces the Win32 API
Windows 8 introduces a new core API called WinRT. This is used to develop Metro style applications using C/C++, .NET, or JavaScript. These applications automatically gain features such as hardware acceleration and advanced power management out of the box. Existing Silverlight and WPF applications can be ported to the new “Native XAML” libraries with minimal effort.
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Silverlight 5 RC: Microsoft Reinforces Their Commitment with Many New Features
Microsoft has announced Silverlight 5 RC ahead of the BUILD conference, making sure the are no more questions about their commitment regarding their favorite browser plug-in technology. Silverlight 5 has many new features, including: 2D and 3D graphics rendered via the GPU, remote video control, P/Invoke support, in-browser trusted applications, better performance and tools.
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Resources for Windows Phone Developers
In what’s becoming a tradition, Microsoft has once again confused the version numbers of one of their key products. In brief what you need to target Windows Phone 7.5 is the Windows Phone 7.1 SDK and the August 2011 build of the Windows Phone Toolkit. Or you can give the PhoneGap beta a spin.
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Task Parallel Library for Silverlight
Silverlight’s asynchronous service model forces developers to deal with multi-threading from the very beginning. So it seems odd that Microsoft choose to omit the Task Parallel Library, which is the core of .NET’s multi-threading infrastructure. Fortunately there are options.