Silverlight Tour Training FAQ

I’ve just finished teaching my first Silverlight Tour training in Montreal, people were very excited about Silverlight 2 and I got lots of interesting question I thought I could share (with my answers!):

* Can you export XAML from Adobe software's?

There are some plug-ins available to export XAML from Adobe tools:

• Illustrator AI to XAMLExport
• Photoshop Psd2Xaml
• Infragistics Fireworks to XAML Exporter

These tools are not always perfect and some only export XAML for WPF, I think the best way is to import your graphics in Expression Design then export XAML.

* How do you localize a Silverlight app ?

There is no “Generate Local Resource” support to localize XAML UI.
So this is not as easy as ASP.NET but it is possible to use multiple xap files for your manually generated resx as explained in this link:
http://blogs.msdn.com/webdevtools/archive/2008/06/10/localizing-a-silverlight-application.aspx

* Animation: can we set Duration property in milliseconds ?

XAML syntax for Duration is: Duration=”00:02:50” (0 hour, 2 minutes, 50 seconds).
To use milliseconds you can simply set: Duration=”00:00:00.5” (50 milliseconds)
or by code: obj.Duration = TimeSpan.FromMilliseconds(50);

* Animation: Can we use Motion Path ?

No, motion path can be used in WPF but not in Silverlight.

* Can you use Silverlight in a Windows Forms app ?

You can use a WebBrowser control and set its Url property to your web page hosting Silverlight app.

* What about printing a Silverlight app ?

Currently there is no particular print support in Silverlight. It will print “as is” in IE but not in Firefox (blank area).

* Do multiple Silverlight app can share Isolated Storage settings?

Yes, xap from the same domain can access datas set via IsolatedStorageSettings.SiteSettings[…].

Also some students found a bug in Visual Studio 2008: You don’t have XAML IntelliSense in a DataTemplate:

<ListBox x:Name="myListBox"

         Width="325"

         Margin="8">

  <ListBox.ItemTemplate>

    <DataTemplate>        

       no IntelliSense here...

    </DataTemplate>

  </ListBox.ItemTemplate>

</ListBox>

Check our website for the next Silverlight training in french!