Professional F# 2.0

Chapter 22. Silverlight

WHAT'S IN THIS CHAPTER?

• Working with Visual Studio Project Templates

• Using the Silverlight Toolkit

• Working with data binding

Silverlight is one of the most popular new facets of .NET and is used to broadcast the Olympic Games, Netflix HD streaming, and financial analyst dashboards and is quickly gaining popularity as a principal enterprise application development platform. Silverlight is a web browser plug-in runtime environment for executing .NET code. Originally dubbed WPF/E for Windows Presentation Framework Everywhere, Silverlight offers a powerful vector-based presentation engine for creating dynamic content. Most development in Silverlight is done in C# or VB.NET. But because the underlying runtime environment is a special CLR that is compatible with F# code, a few tweaks can unleash the full power of F# in Silverlight applications.

OVERVIEW

Silverlight is a Rich Internet Application (RIA) platform for developing both enterprise and public Web-based applications. Silverlight 3 and later versions include support for out-of-browser applications and network status awareness for enabling offline mode. Silverlight 4 supports printing, local fonts, webcam, microphone, group policy object support, and many other features that make it an excellent platform for both Web and enterprise development.

The recommended architecture for Silverlight development separates the application into two tiers not including the database tier. The client tier includes presentation logic, ...