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Is Silverlight Ready?

Excitement for the next version of any technology is apt to be high, but Microsoft has a history of making the version 3 of their products the jumping-on point. Microsoft has done its best to convince application developers that Silverlight is ready for business. While many of the features are focused to help build line-of-business applications, there are features that should appeal to most developers using the Silverlight 3 platform.

On the face of it, Silverlight 3 is an evolutionary release, not a revolutionary one. In many ways, you should consider that Silverlight 3 is an additive release. This means Silverlight 2 applications should continue to work (whether you leave them as Silverlight 2 or convert them to Silverlight 3) but they may get some unexpected behavior changes. Please see the “What’s New in Silverlight 3” topic in the official product documentation for a full list of changes for Silverlight 2 applications.

The new features in Silverlight 3 run the gamut from very visible features (like Out of Browser support) to tiny jewels of functionality that will help developers do their job easier. This article will walk through all the changes by category.

Controls

While not revolutionary, the control set in Silverlight 3 has a number of changes in packaging and content. The focus is primarily to help application developers be more productive but there are other surprises as well.

Packaging

The strategy of having built-in controls, controls that exist in the Silverlight SDK and others that exist in the Silverlight Toolkit, has changed a bit in Silverlight 3. Controls that used to be part of the Silverlight Toolkit but have been deemed to have matured have been migrated to the Silverlight SDK. The packaging of these controls is still outside of the Silverlight plug-in, but they are shipped with the Silverlight Tools instead of requiring the additional download of the Silverlight Toolkit. The controls that have made the leap to the SDK include:

- AutoCompleteBox
- HeaderedItemsControl
- TreeView

Validating Controls

Microsoft enhanced the existing control set to support displaying validation errors. For example, you can now set the TextBox to know about validation errors by specifying the NotifyOnValidationError and ValidatesOnExceptions like so:

<TextBox Text=”{Binding Name,
                Mode=TwoWay,
                NotifyOnValidationError=true,
                ValidatesOnExceptions=true}”
         Width=”100”
         Height=”25”/>

The Name property that you are binding to may have some validation (in this case a simple check for length validation):   

string _name;
public string Name
{
  get { return _name; }
  set
  {
    if (value.Lenght > 10)
    {
      throw new InvalidOperationException(
                              “String too long”);
    }
    _name = value;
  }
}

Data Controls

Microsoft added new controls to specifically target line-of-business applications and rapid application development. Developers can now choose from a number of small controls to create smart line-of-business applications. These include:

- DataPager: Supports paging through a variety of different types of data.
- Label: A control that supports feedback to the user of required and non-required fields.
- DescriptionViewer: Indicator that relates information about the field.
- ValidationSummary: Shows a list of validation errors, if any.
- DataField: Wraps a Label and a DescriptionViewer around a content section.
- DataForm: A container to give a rapid-application experience for creating an editing experience to data.

Dialog-like Windows

While not really a control, the new ChildWindow class is an important inclusion to the Silverlight tool set. The ChildWindow (available as part of the Silverlight Toolkit) is a base class for a new XAML document that developers can use as a makeshift dialog window. In Visual Studio, there is a new Item template for the ChildWindow as well.

ListBox

The venerable ListBox now includes the ability to support multiple selections. You can use this feature by setting the SelectionMode attribute/property:

<ListBox SelectionMode=”Multiple” />

The SelectionMode enumeration supports three values:

- Single: Same as the Silverlight 2 behavior.
- Multiple: Allows multiple selections with modifier keys (Ctrl/Shift).
- Extended: Allows multiple selections without modifier keys.

In addition, the default item creation for the ListBox uses the new VirtualizingStackPanel, which will improve performance of large lists of items.

ComboBox

In Silverlight 2, the ComboBox was the most notorious control for having odd behavior. Microsoft made some beneficial changes to this control in Silverlight 3. In Silverlight 2, if you had the ComboBox’s popup larger than the ComboBox itself and required a scrollbar, the width of the ComboBox was too narrow by the width of the scrollbar so your items would get clipped. Microsoft fixed this in Silverlight 3.

In addition, when using Enumerations with the ItemsSource of a ComboBox, the ComboBox correctly shows strings instead of numbers as shown below:

myComboBox.ItemsSource =
  new SelectionMode[] { SelectionMode.Single };
  // Works now

DataGrid

The DataGrid now supports grouping. To use the paging you’ll need to use a PagedCollectionView to wrap your collections and then set the GroupDescriptions as shown below:

// Wrap some collection in the view
var view = new PagedCollectionView(data);

// Group by Company Name
view.GroupDescriptions.Add(new
  PropertyGroupDescription(“CompanyName”));

// use the view as data source
theGrid.ItemSource = view;

This allows grouping in multiple levels to create true hierarchies from non-heirarchical data.

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