He is Silverhand, who was foretold, destined to save the world from Chaos. To do so he needs the Arcana: The Spear of Light, The Stone of Destiny, The Cup of Blood and The Sword of Flame. Once the treasures of the gods of creation, they have been for eons lost to both gods and men. Properly used, they can defeat the rising tide of evil that is sweeping the world. But if Silverhand fails in his quest, the world will be plunged into an eternal nightmare of suffering and death.

“The book you are holding contains the keys to writing great Silverlight 3 applications. Use them well!” –From the Foreword by Scott Guthrie, corporate vice president, Microsoft Developer Division Microsoft Silverlight is a leading cross-platform, Rich Internet Application (RIA) technology that allows you to create more compelling and interactive Web experiences than are possible with simple HTML browser pages. Silverlight 3 includes significant improvements over previous versions, including “out-of-browser” operation, H.264 video, 3D graphics, and real-time effects. Essential Silverlight 3 is the definitive reference and insider’s guide. It not only covers all the key features of the Silverlight 3 runtime and how to use them but, in Under the Hood sections, explains why each feature was developed and how each one works. These “insider” explanations often lead to concise, practical performance tips that can help you speed up your own Silverlight applications. Author Ashraf Michail is uniquely qualified to explain Silverlight 3. He is a Microsoft Silverlight architect who has guided Silverlight from its beginnings through the current version. In this book, he shows how to Integrate the principles and components of a Silverlight application, including XAP, XAML, and .NET code Use Silverlight vector graphics, bitmap images, and animation Display predictable and readable text across platforms and animate text elements Obtain mouse and keyboard input, including mouse wheel events Implement smooth animations to improve your user interface and make your application more pleasing to the user Use the Canvas, StackPanel, Grid, and Border elements to lay out your application and define custom layout elements Play high-quality, live, and on-demand video and audio Customize the built-in and toolkit controls and develop new custom Silverlight controls Connect to and synchronize with data using Silverlight Data Binding Use built-in real-time effects and define custom HLSL pixel shaders Enable GPU-accelerated rendering If you are a developer who is getting started with Silverlight or an expert Silverlight developer who is interested in understanding the inner workings of the Silverlight runtime, this book is for you.

Pro Silverlight 1.1 is the perfect reference: you’ll learn about the features that put Silverlight in direct competition with Adobe Flash and, best of all, you’ll experience the plumbing of .NET and the design model of WPF through Silverlight—-all of the same .NET technology that developers use to design next-generation Windows applications. Author Matthew MacDonald provides an expertly crafted tutorial written from professional developer to professional developer. You’ll learn how to create rich media applications using Silverlight across browsers and platforms.

Provides information on creating cross-platform interactive applications using Silverlight 1.0.

Silverlight is Microsoft's new cross-browser plug-in for delivering richer web experiences to end-users, including video and animations. Silverlight is generating buzz not only inside the traditional Microsoft developer community, but also among designers and web developers who have long relied on other tools such as Macromedia Flash to get their jobs done. Though Silverlight is still in beta, there's no need to wait. In this Short Cut, Siverlight-insider and Microsoft MVP Shawn Wildermuth introduces you to Silverlight's key features and shows you how to tap into its functionality to spice up your HTML and ASP.NET pages. You'll begin with the "Why" and "What" of Silverlight," but quickly move on to learn the basics of Silverlight XAML, the mark-up language you'll use to deliver Silverlight content to your web pages. You'll learn about the Silverlight layout model, namespaces, animations and more. You'll see how to host Silverlight on an HTML page, how to handle events and errors, and how to manipulate Silverlight XAML dynamically with JavaScript. You'll learn how to work with prerecorded audio and video as well as streaming media, and how to integrate Silverlight with an ASP.NET project. Finally, you'll get suggestions on where to look for tools, examples and additional documentation. In short, if you're ready to test-drive Silverlight today, this Short Cut is the perfect tutorial for experienced web developers, and it comes in a single package that's concise, coherent and loaded with sample code.

Silverlight 4 has the potential to revolutionize the way we build business applications. With its flexibility, web deployment, cross-platform capabilities, rich .NET language support on the client, rich user interface control set, small runtime, and more, it comes close to the perfect platform in which to build business applications. It’s a very powerful technology, and despite its youth, it’s moving forward at a rapid pace and is gaining widespread adoption. This book will guide you through the process of designing and developing enterprise-strength business applications in Silverlight 4 and C#. You will learn how to take advantage of the power of Silverlight to develop rich and robust business applications, from getting started to deployment, and everything in between. In particular, this book will serve developers who want to learn how to design business applications, and introduce the patterns to use, the issues that you’ll face, and how to resolve them. Chris Anderson, who has been building line-of-business applications for years, demonstrates his experience through a candid presentation of how to tackle real-life issues, rather than just avoid them. Developers will benefit from his hard-won expertise through business application design patterns that he shares throughout the book. With this book in hand, you will Create a fully functional business application in Silverlight Discover how to satisfy all of the general requirements that most business applications need Develop a business application framework

This comprehensive book teaches you how to build data-rich business applications with Silverlight 2 that draw on multiple sources of data. Packed with reusable examples, Data-Driven Services with Silverlight 2 covers all of the data access and web service tools you need, including data binding, the LINQ data querying component, RESTful and SOAP web service support, cross-domain web service calls, and Microsoft's new ADO.NET Data Services and the ADO.NET Entity Framework. With this book, you will: Know when and how to use LINQ to JSON, LINQ to XML, and LINQ to Objects Learn how Silverlight 2 applications bind, pass, read, save, query, and present data Discover how your application can call web services to work with SOAP, REST, RSS, AtomPub, POX and JSON Design REST, ASMX, and WCF web services that communicate with Silverlight 2 Harness RESTful web services such as Digg, Amazon, and Twitter Retrieve and save data using the new Entity Framework and WCF Work with RESTful ADO.NET Data Services and its Silverlight client library to move data between your Silverlight application and a database Data-Driven Services with Silverlight 2 offers many tips and tricks for building data-rich business applications, and covers the scenarios you're most likely to encounter. Complete examples in C# and VB can be downloaded from the book's companion website.