Getting Started With Silverlight

Odds are if you are on this site you are probably interested in building Silverlight applications. Here’s the rundown of what you need to get up and running.

What You Will Need

You will need either Visual Studio 2008, or the Expression Blend 2.5 Preview.

(For now, you will need Visual Studio 2008 Standard or above. Unfortunately it looks like the Express versions cannot author Silverlight content just yet.)

What Else You Will Need

(All of these are at the very bottom of https://silverlight.net/GetStarted/)

If you encounter any problems, Bradley Bartz has some great troubleshooting tips here: https://weblogs.asp.net/bradleyb/archive/2008/03/06/installation-tips-for-sivliverlight-tools-beta-1-for-visual-studio-2008.aspx

Starting Your First Project

Once you have all of those pieces installed you should be ready to create Silverlight 2 applications. Just Open Visual Studio 2008 and choose File -> New Project. Choose the Silverlight node and choose Silverlight Application. Give it a better name than SilverlightApplication1 and hit OK.

clip_image002

Once you do that there is one last question to answer, do you want to add a web site to host your Silverlight control, or do you want to have this page "automagically" generated each time you run your application.

clip_image004

Pick the Web Site option if:

  • You want to work with Web Services
  • You want to perform cross domain calls
  • You want to reference images that are not part of your application

Pick the Test Page option if:

  • You just want to write a quick sample that only works with local data and resources
  • You plan on adding this application to an existing Web Site

 

Now that you are up and running you can start playing around with Silverlight.  If this is your first time with Silverlight and WPF, Scott Guthrie has a great introductory walk through, or if you are interested in doing things with the Silverlight DataGrid check out these posts.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    March 11, 2008
    PingBack from http://msdnrss.thecoderblogs.com/2008/03/11/getting-started-with-silverlight-4/

  • Anonymous
    March 20, 2008
    If you have ever worked on an application that displayed large amounts of data, one of the cornerstones

  • Anonymous
    March 21, 2008
    Shawn Wildermuth creates Linkable SL Apps, Scott Morrison on Getting Started with SL2 and a walk-thru

  • Anonymous
    March 26, 2008
    OK so I finally found some time to start playing around with SL2 B1 in earnest this last weekend. The

  • Anonymous
    March 27, 2008
    Thanks for this.  I am looking forward to you next post on customizing columns.  I assume you will show how to templatize the control?  Thanks!

  • Anonymous
    May 20, 2008
    UsingTheSilverlightDataGrid Ifyouhaveeverworkedonanapplicationthatdisplayedlargeamoun...

  • Anonymous
    June 04, 2008
    今天找到關於SilverlightDataGrid的一些技巧,記錄下來,以備後用.

  • Anonymous
    July 28, 2008
    Scott, I have troubles using it in blend and setting the DataGridLength property to a numric value. Miguel Madero

  • Anonymous
    July 28, 2008
    Just found more info on the topic and there's a bug already closed, hope to see that in the next bits http://connect.microsoft.com/Expression/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=350446