fmlove wrote:
Minimum Requirements for Silverlight
"Silverlight runtime" is the minimum requirement for viewing the Silverlight content in your browser. For development, I will divide this into two subjects as below. 1. Minimum requirement for developing Silverlight 2. The best tools for developing Silverlight 1. Minimum requirement for developing Silverlight - Software Requirement There are currently two versions such as 1.0 and 2.0 Alpha for Silverlight. I guess, you won't need anything for developing Silverligth 1.0 project but you will need .NET framework 2.0 for compiling Silverlight 2.0 Alpha. - Text Editor You can write the codes with your favorite text editor. (Like you don't need VS for writing C# code.) In Silverlight, we use "managed code, XAML, Javascript, HTML" so those can be written with your favorite text editor. 2. The best tools for developing Silverlight 1.1 project - Visual Studio 2008 - Silverlight 1.1 Alpha runtime - Silverlight 1.1 Alpha SDK - Silverlight 1.1 Alpha Tool for VS 2008 - Microsoft Expression Blend 2 December Preview (optional) - ASP.NET 3.5 Extension (optional) - Entity Framework and ADO.NET Data Service (Astoria) (optional) You can use VS 2005 for developing Silverlight 1.0 but I suggest you to try Silverlight 1.1 (a.k.a 2.0). Because there will be huge differences between those versions. If you are using Silverlight 1.0, you will miss a lot of cool features of 2.0. "Silverlight 1.1 Alpha SDK" will give you a few example of Silverlight 1.1 controls and etc.. "Silverlight 1.1 Alpha Tool for VS 2008 " will give you the silverlight project template and control/class library template. It will also give you the easiest way of integrating between ASP.NET and Silverlight. "Microsoft Expression Blend 2 December Preview" - I used to use this tool for designing the Silverlight UI. There is no design view support for XAML so I used it as XAML Designer. "ASP.NET 3.5 Extension" - I'm also new to this extension but Silverlight control from this extension is really helpful. "Entity Framework and ADO.NET Data Service (Astoria)" - If you want to create data-driven silverlight application, you will need this. It allows you to use RESTful service in Silverlight application. I wrote a few posts about this in my blog. Update: Silverlight 2 beta1 is released. Hope it helps.
Thanks and Rega