InfoQ Homepage Silverlight Content on InfoQ
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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.
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Writing Asynchronous Tests with Rx and Silverlight
Richard Szalay is demonstrates how Reactive Extensions can be used to make asynchronous testing with the Silverlight Unit Testing Framework less error prone.
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Rapid Business Application Development with Visual Studio LightSwitch
Visual Studio LightSwitch 2011 is a simplified development tool intended to speed up the creation of custom business applications. It includes pre-built components, templates, and predefined data types for the most common business needs, and allows developers to produce form-driven applications for either desktop use or deployment to the cloud.
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Jeremy Likness on Clean Design-Time Friendly ViewModels
There are many ways to handle design-time data in view-models. While some people use complex dependency injection frameworks or inversion of control containers, the simplest method is to just check the DesignerProperties.IsInDesignTool flag. Unfortunately this has the side effect of embedding the design-time data into one’s application. Jeremy Likness offers a couple ways of working around this.
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WCF Data Services June CTP: LINQ Improvements and Properties on Derived Types
The WCF Data Services June 2011 CTP for .NET 4 and Silverlight 4 includes Any/All operators for LINQ, support for properties on derived types, and an OData serializer/deserializer.
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Microsoft’s Silence is Infuriating .NET Developers
Earlier this month Microsoft unveiled a new touch-centric UI for Windows 8. According to the presentation this new UI allows Windows 8 applications built using just HTML5 and JavaScript. This is great news for web developers looking to do more with the Windows platform, but Microsoft is refusing to say whether or not .NET can also be used for this new application model.
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Scott Olson on Cross Platform Mobile Development with MonoCross
We recently interviewed Scott Olson of the MonoCross Project. The MonoCross Project is a framework for cross-platform mobile development. It uses a combination of .NET and Mono technologies.
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What to look forward to in WPF vNext
With all the focus on Silverlight, and more recently HTML 5, a lot of people have been wondering about the future of WPF. This in quite understandable, as silence from Microsoft’s press machine often means that the project is on hold, possibly forever. However, it could also mean they aren’t ready to reveal what they are working on.
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Mono Brings Silverlight to the Android Tablet and Phone
Under the mantra, “We love .NET more than Microsoft”, Mono has been making the promise of cross-platform .NET development a reality. First there was the native toolkit support for iOS and Android, now they are opening up the world of Android tablets to Silverlight developers.
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Silverlight Status Report
Silverlight on the browser is better than ever. It is getting the same kind of performance improvements seen with HTML 5 while still benefiting from statically typed languages and JIT compilation. So why is Microsoft barely willing to talk about it at MIX?