Michael Knopf

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This is the first post in a 4 part series on Silverlight, during which we will cover Silverlight from start to finish; including architecting, coding, testing, and deploying real-world Silverlight apps. We will also discuss security, its limitations, and what you need to know to secure your application and WCF services and deploy them to IIS.

1. Getting Started

   1. Where to get the necessities
   2. Must Have tools
   3. Project setup and structure
   4. Silverlight Toolkit, Contrib. Library, and Free components
   5. Straight talk about the awesomeness, disadvantages, and difficulties in Silverlight
      1. The learning curve
      2. XAML, it’s a whole new world
      3. Blend, it’s a whole new tool even if you already know Adobe Photoshop
      4. Visual Studio and Blend: it takes two to tango
   6. Gotchas that will drive you nuts

2. Getting things done in Silverlight

   1. Understanding the basics
      1. UI layout
         • Grids
         • Stack panels
         • Canvases
         • Margins
      2. Animations
         • Visual State Manager
         • Animation using Blend
         • Behaviors
      3. Events and Data-Binding
         • Getting a grip on Asynchronous Data Exchange
         • Data-Binding and why it’s so awesome in Silverlight
         • Accessing your web services: set-up to easily handle moving from Dev to Test and then into the Production Environment
         • Wiring events to User Controls b. Accessing and Using Shared Components
   2. Accessing and Using Shared Components
      1. Using Blend’s Control Library to access items in referenced libraries
      2. Extending existing controls in order to customize them
   3. Testing and Debugging your application
      1. Using Fiddler to intercept web service requests
      2. Using Silverlight Spy to identify User Interface elements
      3. Unit Testing your Web Services and Business Logic
   4. Getting Around: Showing/Hiding Silverlight screens
      1. Using Delegates to control logic flow between screens
      2. Using the new “Silverlight Menu Navigation” template
   5. Application State and Persistent Storage
      1. How and when to use Isolated Storage
      2. Silverlight Apps compared to ASP.NET Web Apps
         • Application State in Silverlight
         • Download-all-at-once (Silverlight) vs. Download-when-needed (asp.net)

3. Security

   1. Forms Authentication
   2. Integrated Windows Authentication (IWA)
   3. Restricting Cross-Site Access to your web services
   4. Securing communication between your application and the web server
   5. Guess What: your ENTIRE Silverlight app, with all its C# source code, is exposed to the world (so yes, anyone can steel that Bank application your building)

4. Deployment

   1. Setting up the server to support Silverlight
   2. Deploying your web services to IIS
      • MIME Type support
      • Deployment Scenarios
        1. Hosting your services within the web application
        2. Hosting your services on a separate DNS location
        3. Trusted Sub-Zone Architecture