Silverlight 4 User Interface Cookbook

✍ Scribed by Vibor Cipan

• Publisher: Packt Publishing
• Year: 2010
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 280
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Build and implement rich, standard-friendly user interfaces with Silverlight and Expression Blend

• The first and only book to focus exclusively on Silverlight UI development.
• Have your applications stand out from the crowd with leading, innovative, and friendly user interfaces.
• Detailed instructions on how to implement specific user interface patterns together with XAML and C# (where needed) code, and explainations that are easy-to-understand and follow.
• Real world projects which you can explore in detail and make modifications as you go.
• Written by Vibor Cipan - Microsoft WFP and Silverlight prototyping specialist

In Detail

Silverlight makes it much easier to build web applications with highly usable, interactive, and exciting user interfaces. However, with so many new options open to designers and developers, making the best use of the tools available is not always so easy. It's ease of use and rapid development process has left one area completely uncovered - how to design, build, and implement professional and usable interfaces, and create an enjoyable user experience and interaction.

Written by a Microsoft MVP and Silverlight Prototyping Specialist, this book is the first and only book on developing Silverlight User Interfaces. Clear, step-by-step instructions show how to build all the user interface elements that users look forward to in a cutting edge app. This book offers essential recipes, with each recipe depicting the commonly used user interface patterns built with Silverlight, and in some cases, with WPF to showcase the possibilities.

The author's experience in designing and developing user interfaces enables him to share insights on creating professional interfaces in a clear and friendly way. The book starts off with recipes dealing with fixed and fluid layouts, building custom command link controls, working with navigation, and collapsible panels, and then moves on to the more advanced topics such as calendars, alternating row colors, and task panes. The author covers a number of different UI patterns, controls, and approaches accompanied by XAML and C# code where needed (and explained), along with usage context and practical, proven, and professional techniques for specific controls and patterns.

From maps to task panes, and web cam support to pixel shaders, this Cookbook provides you with a rich selection of Silverlight UI recipes. It covers all that you need to know in order to design and implement a user interface, together with professional user experience and interface guidelines to make your solutions and applications pleasurable for your users.The author has found himself in the role of both, a designer and a developer, at different points in his professional career, and his motive was to create a book that will serve as a useful resource for designers and developers trying to find their way with Silverlight and Expression Blend.By the end of the book, you will be able to create a rich, professional, and standards-compliant user interface.

Design and implement professional user interfaces with Silverlight.

What you will learn from this book

• Implement liquid versus fixed layouts to choose the best design for your application
• Build custom controls like navigation pane, split button, and command link button to suit your application's needs
• Good design practices for patterns like wizards, tabs, status bar area and window locations
• Menu usage practices-classical and contextual ones together with guidelines
• Design and implement navigation patterns, expanders, tiled sections, task panes, and collapsible panels for saving space and minimizing visual distractions
• Design and implement calendar controls to allow user-specific time and date input
• Represent large data sets using alternating row colours as a design technique
• Create a responsive UI and remove the visual noise from the interfaces for a rich user experience
• Enable full screen Silverlight experiences for interactive applications such as games, maps, and media players.
• Add and utilize the maps and geo-based UI controls for a truly immersive map experience for your users
• Use the pixel shading techniques to achieve amazing visual effects on images and controls

Approach

Written in a Cookbook style, this book offers learning and techniques through recipes. It contains step-by-step instructions for designers and developers who want to learn about how to design and implement numerous user interface patterns with Silverlight. It will take you a step further by providing you with professional and proven user interface and user experience guidelines wherever possible. The book is designed in such a way that you can explore it chapter-by-chapter, or read it in any order.

Who this book is written for

If you are a developer or designer who knows the basics of Silverlight, has a smattering of C# and XAML, and wants to build applications with elegant and attractive interfaces, then this book is for you.

✦ Table of Contents

Cover
......Page 1
Copyright......Page 3
Credits......Page 4
Foreword......Page 5
About the Author......Page 7
Acknowledgement......Page 8
About the Reviewers......Page 10
Table of Contents......Page 16
Preface......Page 18
Introduction......Page 24
Fluid layout......Page 25
Creating a navigation pane from the scratch......Page 32
Window management and positioning......Page 42
Wizards......Page 52
Progressive disclosure—showing additional controls on demand......Page 64
Control docking with DockPanel......Page 69
Journal navigation......Page 74
Tabs......Page 81
Adding a status bar area......Page 90
Introduction......Page 100
Command buttons......Page 101
Classical menus......Page 106
Context (right-click) menus......Page 115
Progress indicators with known process duration
......Page 117
Progress indicators with unknown process duration
......Page 121
Creating menu drop-down......Page 123
Command links......Page 128
Split button and creating one from scratch......Page 136
Multiple item selections with simple ListBox......Page 140
Multiple item selections with ListBox and CheckBox combinations......Page 143
Introduction......Page 146
Designing prominent action points......Page 147
How to create faceted navigation and classification......Page 150
Creating tree views......Page 155
Creating and using expanders and collapsible panels......Page 160
Creating and using a paging pattern......Page 166
Using titled sections......Page 172
Creating and using task panes (aka Action Panels)
......Page 177
Creating and utilizing promoted actions......Page 184
Introduction......Page 190
Designing date picker interface......Page 191
Using and implementing the calendar interface
......Page 195
Designing time input interface......Page 201
Implementing star-based rating......Page 205
Designing list views with alternating row colors
......Page 208
Introduction......Page 214
Implementing pop-up window (modal dialogs) in Silverlight......Page 215
Designing responsive enabling user interface......Page 221
Adding maps to Silverlight applications......Page 226
Building full-screen Silverlight experiences......Page 234
Implementing out-of-browser experiences......Page 238
Introduction......Page 244
Webcam support and printing......Page 245
Exploring and using pixel shaders and effects
......Page 251
Animating ListBox items......Page 257
PathListBox—abandoning the rectangular ListBox......Page 263
Index......Page 270