Chapter 3. Silverlight User Interface Controls

Now that you've seen the Silverlight architecture, Silverlight concepts, and what XAML is all about, let's look at the basic user interface controls that Silverlight provides. Silverlight supplies forms controls, such as text boxes for display and for user input, list boxes, check boxes, radio buttons, and others; data manipulation controls, such as data grid, data form, and others; and functional controls, such as date picker, image, media element, and others. While a standard set of controls is important for building user interfaces, even more important is how these controls are placed on a user interface. This is handled by Silverlight's layout controls: one that enables absolute positioning and others that allow more intelligent layouts of controls. This chapter starts with exploring the building blocks of user controls to enable a detailed understanding of the base functionality of all controls. Later we will dive into the details of key layout, forms, data manipulation, and functional user controls. We will also cover new controls and enhanced existing controls introduced in the Silverlight 4 release.