02.06.09 - A little product down the hall

A good friend of mine down the hall works on a little product some of you may have heard of called Silverlight. It’s a nifty little browser runtime that lets you do a bunch of cool things on the web. Lately it’s been generating quite a bit of positive buzz and that buzz is starting to creep into my office from all the way down the hall. It’s definitely got my attention. My curiosity’s peaked, and I think it’s time to see for myself what all the fuss is about.

I’ve dabbled a bit with the original Silverlight release, but Silverlight 2 is a whole new beast. Being a huge fan of the Adobe design tools and the Flash platform, this is going to be interesting to say the least. Over the next few months I’ll be posting my experiences and documenting my progress as I work through ramp-up resources and try to build a so-called “real” project.On wards! From the beginning maestro. Here’s a list of what I’m using to ramp up and get started.

Getting the bits. Most are free and pretty self-explanatory. I like free.

• Microsoft Web Platform Installer: This gets you the free developer tool Visual Web Developer and the Silverlight Tools and SDK. This is really all you need to start writing code. The platform installer also gives you the option to install other stuff like .NET Framework, ASP.NET MVC, SQL Server and IIS stuff. Super easy and highly recommended as the best way to get what you need.
• Microsoft Expression Blend 2 SP1: You’ll need this if you care anything about design. There’s a free 30-day trial available that I’ll be using. The price is a bit steep at $499.99, but then again so is Flash.

Books I’m going to read

• Silverlight 2 Unleashed
• Silverlight 2 Recipes

And some great web resources I’m started out with

• Kirupa.com: A fan since its inception. Awesome stuff.
• Silverlight.net/Learn

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