Innovations like JavaScript, AJAX, Flash, etc improved user's experience of Web apps. They've also given developers a lot of freedom to be creative. Now they have something new to look forward to. Microsoft has recently launched a cross platform, cross browser .NET plug-in to enable developers create Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) that play animations, graphics, and even video.

Silverlight is based on Windows Presentation Foundation/Everywhere (WPF/E) and is aimed to compete with Adobe Flash and presentation components of AJAX. The recent release of Silverlight version 1.1 incorporates .NET Common Language Runtime (CLR), so that Silverlight applications can support application logic written using any .NET language. This built-in CLR support was not available with version 1.0, owing to which application logic had to be written using JavaScript.

In this article we will focus on developing Silverlight applications using Visual Studio 2008 (Orcas) and Expression Blend 2. We will use VS 2008 Beta 2 to develop the application and Expression Blend 2 to design it.

Gathering Required Tools
To develop Silverlight applications, you need to first do some basic configurations for VS 2008. Install Silverlight runtime and ASP.NET Futures, wherein the latter contains controls for ASP.NET to support Silverlight applications. An add-on tool, Silverlight Tools, is also required by VS 2008 Beta 2. The three tools required for Silverlight application development are available on this month's DVD. The exact names are as follows: -

• Silverlight 1.1 Alpha Refresh for Windows
• Microsoft ASP.NET Futures (version July 2007)
• Microsoft Silverlight Tools Alpha for Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2

Installing Silverlight tools provides the integration of VS 2008 with Expression Blend, which allows concurrent development and synchronization of the application's design interface and its logic. Apart from this it also provides project templates for Visual Basic and C#, along with IntelliSense and code generators for XAML. The Expression Blend 2 (September Preview) setup can be picked from the Nov'07 DVD.