Introduction to Silverlight

AnIntroduction toSilverlightEd DonahueAcademic Developer Evangelisted.donahue@microsoft.comcreepyed.com | @creepyed

Ed DonahueSalsa dancerLight joggerCasual cyclistSwimmerTriathlete (for thosecounting)Computer science majorLover of monospacedfontsSupporter of womenin techMicrosoft AcademicDeveloper Evangelist 2ed.donahue@microsoft.com | www.creepyed.com | @creepyed

Topics The Metro design style Silverlight Components Creating a Silverlight Application Silverlight and XAML Introduction to Silverlight Layout Components and Events Silverlight Project Templates ApplicationBar Page Navigation Demos available here: http://bit.ly/EdDemos Windows Phone

Looking for training kits? Windows Phone 7 Mango Training Kit http://bit.ly/wp7mangotraining Windows Phone

Help moving from otherplatforms? Leverage your iPhone dev skills http://bit.ly/ios2wp7 Leverage your Android dev skills http://bit.ly/android2wp7 Windows Phone 5

Windows Phone and Metro To make life easier for us the Metro style is “baked in” to the Windows developer tools The default appearance, behaviour and fonts of the user elements all match the style If you want to find out more about Metro on phone you can read the “User Experience Design Guidelines” http://bit.ly/DesignGuideWP7 Windows Phone

Tools for the job : GraphicalDesign separates theGood planning graphical design aspects from the programming  The designer works on the look and feel of the application  The programmer implements the required behaviours Silverlight is designed to support this A Silverlight designer can use the “Expression Blend” to specify the appearance of the user interface  A version of Blend for the phone is supplied as part of the phone SDK Windows Phone

Metro Templates andComponents Visual Studio provides a set of Metro project templates Each of them maps onto a particular style of application Windows Phone

Application Types and Templates The three application types provide quite different user experiences Select the one that you feel is the most appropriate Windows Phone

Silverlight display elements Application title Page title First number Plus text Second number Equals button Result text Windows Phone

Elements in AddingMachine The adding machine actually contains three different types of Silverlight display elements TextBox  Used to receive user input from the keyboard TextBlock  Used to display messages to the user Button  Used to cause events in the application Windows Phone

Elements and XAML <Grid x:Name="ContentPanel" Grid.Row="1" Margin="12,0,12,0"> <TextBox Height="72" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="8,19,0,0" Name="firstNumberTextBox" Text="0" VerticalAlignment="Top" Width="460" TextAlignment="Center" /> . . . <Button Content="equals" Height="72" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="158,275,0,0" Name="equalsButton" VerticalAlignment="Top" Width="160" Click="equalsButton_Click" /> . . . </Grid> XAML is the markup language that describes the Silverlight UI components Windows Phone

Grid container element <Grid x:Name="ContentPanel" Grid.Row="1" Margin="12,0,12,0"> <TextBox Height="72" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="8,19,0,0" Name="firstNumberTextBox" Text="0" VerticalAlignment="Top" Width="460" TextAlignment="Center" /> . . . <Button Content="equals" Height="72" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="158,275,0,0" Name="equalsButton" VerticalAlignment="Top" Width="160" Click="equalsButton_Click" /> . . . </Grid> Grid is a container into which you can position display elements Windows Phone

TextBox element <Grid x:Name="ContentPanel" Grid.Row="1" Margin="12,0,12,0"> <TextBox Height="72" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="8,19,0,0" Name="firstNumberTextBox" Text="0" VerticalAlignment="Top" Width="460" TextAlignment="Center" /> . . . <Button Content="equals" Height="72" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="158,275,0,0" Name="equalsButton" VerticalAlignment="Top" Width="160" Click="equalsButton_Click" /> . . . </Grid> TextBox is used for text entry TextBlock can be used for text display Windows Phone

Button element <Grid x:Name="ContentPanel" Grid.Row="1" Margin="12,0,12,0"> <TextBox Height="72" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="8,19,0,0" Name="firstNumberTextBox" Text="0" VerticalAlignment="Top" Width="460" TextAlignment="Center" /> . . . <Button Content="equals" Height="72" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="158,275,0,0" Name="equalsButton" VerticalAlignment="Top" Width="160" Click="equalsButton_Click" /> . . . </Grid> Button is used for user actions and generates events when activated Windows Phone

Button element <Grid x:Name="ContentPanel" Grid.Row="1" Margin="12,0,12,0"> <TextBox Height="72" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="8,19,0,0" Name="firstNumberTextBox" Text="0" VerticalAlignment="Top" Width="460" TextAlignment="Center" /> . . . <Button Content="equals" Height="72" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="158,275,0,0" Name="equalsButton" VerticalAlignment="Top" Width="160" Click="equalsButton_Click" /> . . . </Grid> Click is the button clicked event which is bound to the method specified Windows Phone

Button click event handler private void equalsButton_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) { float v1 = float.Parse(firstNumberTextBox.Text); float v2 = float.Parse(secondNumberTextBox.Text); float result = v1 + v2; resultTextBlock.Text = result.ToString(); } The event hander for the button takes the values out of the textboxes, parses them and then calculates and displays the result Windows Phone

DemoThe Silverlight Adding Machine 21

Best Practice: Keyboard use It is best if the user can still press the equals button when the keyboard is displayed This means the equals button should be moved up the screen Windows Phone

Selecting OrientationsSupportedOrientations="Portrait"SupportedOrientations="PortraitOrLandscape" A XAML property for the phone application page lets you select the orientation options available Your application can bind to an event which is fired when the orientation changes Windows Phone

Using a StackPanel <Grid x:Name="ContentPanel" Grid.Row="1" Margin="12,0,12,0"> <StackPanel> <TextBox Height="72" HorizontalAlignment="Center" .../> <TextBlock Height="56" HorizontalAlignment="Center" .../> <TextBox Height="72" HorizontalAlignment="Center" .../> <Button Content="equals" Height="72" ...> <TextBlock Height="46" HorizontalAlignment="Center" .../> </StackPanel> </Grid> To automatically handle orientation change we can use a StackPanel container that will stack the display components Windows Phone

DemoOrientation Handling 25

Handling errors try { v1 = float.Parse(firstNumberTextBox.Text); v2 = float.Parse(secondNumberTextBox.Text); } catch { MessageBox.Show("Invalid number"); return; } A program can catch errors as on the desktop There is also a MessageBox mechanism as well Windows Phone

Configuring the input scope <TextBox InputScope="Number" ... If all you want from the user is a number it is dangerous to allow them to enter text as well You can add to the XAML to specify that the keyboard only accepts numbers Windows Phone

DemoComplete AddingMachine 28

ApplicationBar

Application ChromeSystem Tray and Application Bar System Tray  System owned indicator area that displays system-level status information  Apps can show/hide  Microsoft.Phone.Shell.SystemTray.IsVisib le = false; Application Bar  Area where applications can display buttons for the most common tasks  Can display pop-up menu for less common tasks Windows Phone

Application Bar

Application Bar in Xaml<phone:PhoneApplicationPage x:Class=“MyApp.MainPage” … > <phone:PhoneApplicationPage.ApplicationBar> <shell:ApplicationBar x:Name="AppBar" IsMenuEnabled="True"> <shell:ApplicationBar.Buttons> <shell:ApplicationBarIconButton x:Name="NewContactButton" IconUri="Images/appbar.new.rest.png" Text="New" Click="NewContactButton_Click"/> <shell:ApplicationBarIconButton x:Name="SearchButton" IconUri="Images/appbar.feature.search.rest.png" Text="Find" Click="SearchButton_Click"/> </shell:ApplicationBar.Buttons> <shell:ApplicationBar.MenuItems> <shell:ApplicationBarMenuItem x:Name="GenerateMenuItem" Text="Generate Data" Click="GenerateMenuItem_Click" /> <shell:ApplicationBarMenuItem x:Name="ClearMenuItem" Text="Clear Data" Click="ClearMenuItem_Click" /> </shell:ApplicationBar.MenuItems> </shell:ApplicationBar> </phone:PhoneApplicationPage.ApplicationBar> Windows Phone

App Bar & Landscape Windows Phone

Page Navigation

Frame and Page Frame  Top-level container control  PhoneApplicationFrame class  Contains the page control and system elements such as system tray and application bar Page  Fills the entire content region of the frame  PhoneApplicationPage-derived class  Contains a title  Optionally surfaces its own application bar Windows Phone

Page Navigation Silverlight on Windows Phone uses a Page-based navigation model  Similar to web page model  Each page identified by a URI  Each page is essentially stateless private void hyperlinkButton1_Click( object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) { NavigationService.Navigate( new Uri("/SecondPage.xaml", UriKind.RelativeOrAbsolute) ); } Windows Phone

Navigating Back Application can provide controls to navigate back to preceding page private void button1_Click( object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) { NavigationService.GoBack(); } The hardware Back key will also navigate back to preceding page  No code required – built-in behaviour Windows Phone

DemoApplicationBar and Page Navigation 38

Review Windows Phone applications use Silverlight to express the design of their user interface  The design is expressed in a XAML text file that identifies and configures display elements  Elements can also be manipulated as code objects There are a set of Silverlight templates for applications and elements based on the Metro design You can create multiple Silverlight pages and add them to your project Navigation to pages is performed on the basis of uri (Uniform Resource Indicator) values The back button normally navigates back to the source page, but this can be overridden The uri can contain simple text messages Windows Phone Pages can share larger objects in the App.xaml page

Bonus (and really good to know)

Silverlight Toolkit for WindowsPhone the Microsoft Silverlight teamA product of The Silverlight Toolkit adds tons of additional controls „out of band‟ from the official product control set Includes full open source code, samples, documentation, and design- time support for controls Refresh every 3 months or so  Bug fixes  New controls http://silverlight.codeplex.com

Introduction to Silverlight

by Ed Donahue on Nov 30, 2011

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