Chapter 1. Introducing Silverlight 1.1

Even though Silverlight 1.0 has now been released, many developers are awaiting the arrival of Silverlight 1.1 before taking a serious look at this new technology. Silverlight 1.1 will add the .NET dimension to Microsoft's new Rich Internet Application platform, enabling the global community of .NET developers to apply their VB, C#, and other CLR language skills to writing Silverlight applications. But there's no need to wait; you can take Silverlight for a test drive today.

In this Short Cut, we'll take a close look at Silverlight 1.1 and bring clarity to this bleeding-edge technology. First we'll take a broad look at the new concept of Rich Internet Applications and how Silverlight fits into that picture. Then we'll examine how you work with Silverlight 1.1, highlighting tools, concepts, and code that you will need to build these interactive applications. Finally, we'll take a practical look at using Silverlight 1.1 to build a custom control, pulling all of the concepts and tools together.