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Home Forums General Silverlight Getting Started Confusion with Silverlight, Blend, .Net etc
5 replies. Latest Post by heuertk on July 23, 2007.
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JamieP1
Member
2 points
2 Posts
07-23-2007 5:00 AM |
Ill try and make this simple to ask as im pretty confused with so many names coming into play. Some may be code/beta names others may be proper names given to the product. So
1. Is Silverlight a way of creating client side presentation?2. Is MS Expression Studio a whole suite of designer products?3. What is MS Blend?4. I normally code in VB .Net for my ASP .Net 2.0 sites how important is it to know Silverlight?5. How does .Net 3.5 fit in all this?6. What is Linq, Blinq, WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation), WixFX7. Is Silverlight, Expression Studio and Blend in beta stages or out as a final release? and how do i install Silverlight for Visual Studio 2005?
Thanks in advance. I know some of these answers can probably be found reading a few pages but since im confused with all the code names etc i just needed clarification so i fully understand where i stand in this.
y_makram
Contributor
6172 points
1,233 Posts
07-23-2007 5:54 AM |
1- Yes, Silverlight creates rich client side user experience, so it is a client side presenation technology.
2- Yes, it has products for graphic design, web design, interactive design (silverlight), and media.
3- Expression Blend is a product for authoring interactive content for Silverlight and WPF. Consider it as the Microsoft Flash Studio.
4- Silverlight is not a must, but it is a very important tool when it comes to rich user experience development that provides rich graphics, animations and media.
5- .NET 3.5 runtime is not required to run Silverlight applications. Silverlight implements a subset of 3.5 technologies but in a mini-clr deployed as a browser plug-in. 3.5 Framework is not required to develop Silverlight applications either, it is only required to use Expression products.
6- Linq is a technology that enables language integrated query. It enables programmers to perform SQL like operations on Objects and anything that has a LINQ provider, check this cool video for more info on LINQ. BLINQ is a set of tools to generate and easily integrate ASP .NET applications with LINQ. WPF is the desktop presentation technology of .NET 3.0, it provides rich graphic, animation, media, documents, and 3D in desktop applications. WinFx is the original name for framework 3.0
7- Silverlight 1.0 is in beta, and a release candidate is expected soon, Silverlight 1.1 is in alpha. Some of expression studio products are in beta, and some others are released.
To install SL for Silverlight, you will need to download the 1.0 SDK from here. You should find a file named SilverlightBetaToolsForVS2005.zip, extract it and follow the readme file to install SL for VS2005.
07-23-2007 6:00 AM |
oops, forgot to send the LINQ video URL
http://channel9.msdn.com/showpost.aspx?postid=114680
07-23-2007 6:27 AM |
Thanks for you reply - just one more thing, if we trial MS Expression is it safe to say that this includes Blend? or is Blend separate to the Studio?
Thanks again
07-23-2007 6:31 AM |
Microsoft Expression Studio includes the following products:
Expression WebExpression BlendExpression DesignExpression Media
Trials are available online for each product separately.
heuertk
Participant
1390 points
423 Posts
07-23-2007 10:04 AM |
just to note as well, expression studio includes the release products available. Expression Blend 2 is currently a preview of the next version which supports silverlight authoring -- version 1.0 does not.
Confusion with Silverlight, Blend, .Net etc