MCTS: Microsoft Silverlight 4 Development (70-506) Certification Guide

291 Pages·2012·7.296 MB·English

by  Johnny Tordgeman

www.it-ebooks.info
MCTS: Microsoft Silverlight
4 Development (70-506)
Certification Guide
A compact certification guide to help you prepare for,
and pass, the (70-506): TS: Microsoft Silverlight 4,
Development exam
Johnny Tordgeman
BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI
www.it-ebooks.info
MCTS: Microsoft Silverlight 4 Development (70-506)
Certification Guide
Copyright © 2012 Packt Publishing
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written
permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in
critical articles or reviews.
Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy
of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is
sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, nor Packt
Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages
caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.
Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the
companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals.
However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.
First published: June 2012
Production Reference: 1180612
Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.
Livery Place
35 Livery Street
Birmingham B3 2PB, UK.
ISBN 978-1-84968-466-8
www.packtpub.com
Cover Image by Artie Ng ([email protected])
www.it-ebooks.info
Credits
Author Project Coordinator
Johnny Tordgeman Vishal Bodwani
Reviewers Proofreader
Kunal Chowdhury Linda Morris
Evan Hutnick
Indexer
Rekha Nair
Acquisition Editor
Kerry George
Production Coordinator
Melwyn D'sa
Development Editor
Susmita Panda
Cover Work
Melwyn D'sa
Technical Editor
Devdutt Kulkarni
www.it-ebooks.info
About the Author
Johnny Tordgeman is a professional SharePoint, FAST, and frontend
developer and trainer, who has over six years of experience in the development
of web applications.
Johnny serves as the CTO at E4D Solutions where he specializes in building
enterprise applications based on SharePoint and Silverlight, for the telecom,
financial, and government industries.
Johnny is a frequent speaker at user groups and conferences on SharePoint
and client-side technologies.
First, I would like to thank everyone at Packt Publishing, and
especially Vishal Bodwani, for making this book a reality. Secondly,
I would like to dedicate this book to my amazing wife Ayelet , my
dear parents Itzik and Varda, my brothers Shirley and Yuval, and
my friends Yossi, Idan, Leon, Niv, Itzik, Tal, and Zvi for believing
in me in every step of the way..

Last, but not least, I would like to thank my academic mentor,
Dr. Amnon Dekel, for giving me the confidence to know that
even when things go wrong, someone is there for you.
www.it-ebooks.info
About the Reviewers
Kunal Chowdhury is a Microsoft MVP (Silverlight), Telerik MVP, Codeproject
MVP, and Mentor, and also a frequent speaker at various Microsoft events.
Apart from being an author and passionate blogger, he is a software engineer by
profession. He is very passionate about Silverlight, WP7, WPF, Windows 8 Metro
UI, and LightSwitch. Kunal shares his findings at his technical blog—http://www.
kunal-chowdhury.com/. He has also worked as a technical reviewer for the book,
Fun with Silverlight 4.
He is the owner of http://www.silverlight-zone.com/. If you wish, you can
follow him on Twitter (@kunal2383), or you can connect with him on his Facebook
page—facebook.com/blog.kunal2383.
Evan Hutnick works as a Developer Evangelist and Solutions Consultant for
Telerik, empowering customers to make the most out of the XAML platforms, as well
as offering best practices, mentoring, and custom development services. Evan has
previously provided a technical review for the Silverlight 5 Data and Services Cookbook,
and also hosts a brand new XAML-based site named http://xamlwatch.com/,
designed to deliver fresh and interesting content covering all of the XAML platforms.
Last, but certainly not least, I would like to thank my wonderful wife
and daughter, for supporting me in my development pursuits, and
allowing me to geek it up on nights and weekends.
www.it-ebooks.info
www.PacktPub.com
Support files, eBooks, discount offers and more
You might want to visit www.PacktPub.com for support files and downloads related
to your book.
Did you know that Packt offers eBook versions of every book published, with PDF and ePub
files available? You can upgrade to the eBook version at www.PacktPub.com and as a print
book customer, you are entitled to a discount on the eBook copy. Get in touch with us at
[email protected] for more details.
At www.PacktPub.com, you can also read a collection of free technical articles, sign up
for a range of free newsletters and receive exclusive discounts and offers on Packt books
and eBooks.
http://PacktLib.PacktPub.com
Do you need instant solutions to your IT questions? PacktLib is Packt's online digital book
library. Here, you can access, read and search across Packt's entire library of books.
Why Subscribe?
• Fully searchable across every book published by Packt
• Copy and paste, print and bookmark content
• On demand and accessible via web browser
Free Access for Packt account holders
If you have an account with Packt at www.PacktPub.com, you can use this to access
PacktLib today and view nine entirely free books. Simply use your login credentials for
immediate access.
Instant Updates on New Packt Books
Get notified! Find out when new books are published by following @PacktEnterprise on
Twitter, or the Packt Enterprise Facebook page.
www.it-ebooks.info
Table of Contents
Preface 1
Chapter 1: Overview of Silverlight 5
What is Microsoft Silverlight 5
Setting up your development environment 8
Introducing XAML 8
Content controls 10
Namespaces 11
Naming your objects 12
Setting properties 13
The Silverlight application model 13
Integrating Silverlight with HTML 16
Using the object tag 17
Using the JavaScript helper files 19
In and out-of-browser support 20
Summary 22
Chapter 2: Laying out Our User Interface 23
Arranging content with panels 23
Creating your first Silverlight application 24
Grid 26
StackPanel 33
Canvas 34
Border 36
ScrollViewer 37
ViewBox 38
Controlling the visibility 39
Using core and content controls 40
Using core controls 40
TextBox 40
TextBlock 41
Buttons 42
www.it-ebooks.info
Table of Contents
Using content controls 46
Creating user controls 48
Creating your first user control 48
The navigation framework 52
Adding new pages 53
Navigation events 54
NavigationService 55
The UriMapper class 57
The journal 58
Implementing caching 59
Displaying a collection of items 59
ItemsControl 60
ListBox 60
ComboBox 61
TreeView 62
DataGrid 64
Displaying data in DataGrid 65
DataGrid templating 66
Sorting 67
Playing media files 68
The MediaElement control 68
Digital Rights Management 69
Working with audio files 70
AudioStreamCount and AudioStreamIndex 70
Balance 70
Volume 70
IsMuted 71
Displaying closed captioning 71
Test your knowledge 73
Summary 76
Chapter 3: Enhancing the User Interface 77
Creating or modifying the control styles 77
Styling at the element level 78
Styling at the page level 80
Explicit styling 80
Implicit styling 83
BasedOn styling 84
Styling at the global level 85
Styles hierarchy 86
Creating control templates 87
TemplateBinding 88
Showing the content 89
[ ii ]
www.it-ebooks.info
Table of Contents
The ContentPresenter element 89
The ItemPresenter element 90
Attaching the style 91
Creating or modifying data templates 92
Creating your first data template 92
DataForm templates 94
Using UserControl as a data template 97
Manipulating visuals 98
Getting ready 98
Skew transform 99
Rotate transform 100
Scale transform 101
Translate transform 102
Perspective transforms 103
Grouping transformations together 104
Pixel shaders 105
Animating visuals 107
Creating storyboards 108
Controlling the storyboard 110
Repeating and reversing storyboards 110
Implementing easing functions 111
Configuring bitmap caching 112
Implementing behaviors 113
Triggering storyboards by using behaviors 113
Creating your own behavior 115
Managing the visual state 117
Test your knowledge 120
Summary 123
Chapter 4: Implementing Application Logic 125
Handling events 125
Adding events 126
Handling routed events 127
The AddHandler method 130
Consuming services asynchronously 131
Adding your first service reference 131
Configuring service endpoint 134
Handling timeouts 136
Cross-domain networking 136
Working with background threads 137
Spawning a background thread to execute code 137
Creating your first BackgroundWorker 138
[ iii ]
www.it-ebooks.info