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Tips in Silverlight

10. Tips in Silverlight. Gill Cleeren Microsoft Regional Director MVP ASP.NET Ordina .net software architect. About Gill. .net architect Ordina ( ordina.be ) Microsoft Regional Director ( theregion.com ) MVP ASP.net Writing: .net magazine Blogs MSDN Speaking: TechDays

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Tips in Silverlight

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  1. 10 Tips in Silverlight Gill Cleeren Microsoft Regional Director MVP ASP.NETOrdina .net software architect

  2. About Gill... • .net architect Ordina (ordina.be) • Microsoft Regional Director (theregion.com) • MVP ASP.net • Writing: • .net magazine • Blogs • MSDN • Speaking: • TechDays • Usergroups(Visug, Biwug, Besug) • Ineta speaker • Blog: snowball.be • Email: gill.cleeren@snowball.be • Twitter: gillcleeren / MSN: gillcleeren@hotmail.com

  3. I present you... the tips • Creating a custom install experience • ASP.NET Membership Integration • Double clickety-click • Debugging services • Duplex services • Silverlight and SEO • Virtual Earth in Silverlight • Drag’n’drop and hit testing • Model-View-ViewModel • Async unit tests

  4. 1 Creating a custom install experience with Silverlight

  5. Developers, developers, developers... • Developers create great Silverlight apps • They forget one thing: the install experience! • Maybe they’re happy with the “Silverlight Badge” • Default if the app was created with Visual Studio 2008 and Silverlight tools

  6. Why do should we care? • Problem: • Users don’t understand this medallion • Think it’s a banner • They wonder if it’s worth installing (they don’t see your fancy app just yet...) • They might be afraid to install something, we should encourage them, perhaps tease them •  In short, the user is confused! Don’t you want everybody to enjoy your application?

  7. Some research was done... And the following was the result... • Let the content jump out! • Convince users that Silverlight is thrustworthy • Show users how to do it • They’re not all developers • Make the experience interactive  Tease them with what they can expect inside!

  8. What would you choose?

  9. Convinced? OK! Let’s build a better experience... • To start with, a PC can be in several states

  10. It all started with a simple <object> Steps needed to get a great install UX • Configure Silverlight’s object tag • Render UI prompts • Capture callbacks from Silverlight.js

  11. What you need From bad to great...

  12. Creating a custom install experience with Silverlight Demo

  13. 2 ASP.NET MembershipIntegration

  14. ASP.NET membership integration You need to authenticate users? You need to authorize users? You want to create profiles? One answer: use ASP.NET membership ... Yes, in Silverlight!

  15. A small intro in Membership & Co • Manages users and credentials • Declarative access via W.S. Admin Tool • Programmatic access via Membership API • Simplifies forms authentication • Provides logic for validating user names and passwords, creating users, and more • Manages data store for credentials, e-mail addresses, and other membership data • Provider-based for flexible data storage

  16. The Membership API in-a-slide Membership architecture Controls Login LoginStatus LoginView Other Controls Membership API Membership MembershipUser Membership Providers SqlMembershipProvider ActiveDirectory- MembershipProvider Other Membership Providers Membership Data SQL Server Active Directory Other Data Stores

  17. Membership class • Provides static methods for performing key membership tasks • Creating and deleting users • Retrieving information about users • Generating random passwords • Validating logins • Includes read-only static properties for acquiring data about provider settings

  18. Roles • Role-based security in a box • Declarative access via W.S. Admin Tool • Programmatic access via Roles API • Simplifies adding role-based security to sites that employ forms authentication • Maps users to roles on each request • Provides data store for role information • Provider-based for flexible data storage

  19. Profiles • Store per-user data persistently • Strongly typed (unlike session state) • On-demand lookup (unlike session state) • Long-lived (unlike session state) • Supports authenticated and anonymous users • Accessed through dynamically compiled ProfileBase derivatives • Provider-based for flexible data storage

  20. ... OK, great... I’m here to learn about Silverlight! How can I access server-side code?

  21. ASP.NET Application Services • Built-in Web services that provide access to features such as forms authentication, roles, and profile properties • Useful for many types of client applications • Internally, they use SOAP

  22. ASP.NET Application Services

  23. ASP.NET Application Services • 3 available services: • Authentication service • Roles service • Profile service • WCF services

  24. ASP.NET Membership Integration Demo

  25. 3 Doubleclickety-click

  26. Silverlight and double-click • A click: depression of a button on a computer mouse; “a click on the left button for example” • A double-click: well, the same, but very fast after one another • Silverlight does not have built-in support for double-clicking

  27. Solution 1: use ticks between clicks private void myTextBlock_MouseLeftButtonDown(object sender, MouseButtonEventArgs e) { if (DateTime.Now.Ticks - currentTicks < 2310000) { //yes, bingo, a double click! myResultTextBlock.Text = "A doubleclick, you did it"; } else { //try harder... myResultTextBlock.Text = "FAIL"; } currentTicks = DateTime.Now.Ticks; }

  28. Solution 2: Triggers (SL3 only) • Behaviors: reusable piece of interactivity that you can attach to any element • No more copy/paste • Changes element functionality • See Expression Gallery

  29. Behaviors and Co • Behaviors is actually composed out of • Behavior • Trigger: • causes an Action to happen • Starts the behavior • Action • Let’s create a double-click trigger

  30. Doubleclickety-click Demo

  31. 4 Debuggingservices

  32. Services debugging in SL2 • Services are not nice when debugging! • Error in Silverlight 2 is not returned to client • OK when you have access to the server • NOK when you don’t

  33. Debugging services from SL2 to SL3 • Attempt 1: just run the service • No error info on the wire • Nothing in Silverlight • Attempt 2: IncludeExceptionDetailsInFaults=true • Visible in Fiddler • Still nothing in Silverlight • Cause: sends back HTTP status 500 • Silverlight can’t work with that •  Convert to HTTP status 200 and use SL3

  34. Debuggingservices Demo

  35. 5 Duplexservices

  36. Duplex services • Useful for real-time interaction (e.g. chat),monitoring (e.g. stock ticker), etc. • “Duplex” feature introduced in Silverlight 2 • Based on “smart polling” • Hard to use in SL2 • Advanced WCF knowledge required • Significantly simplified in Silverlight 3 Beta1 • May improve even more after the Beta

  37. Client side • 1. “Add Service Reference” • 2. Open the Proxy (Config not supported) • May get easier in final SL3 release • 3. Call Methods and Handle Events EndpointAddress address = new EndpointAddress("http://example.com/Service1.svc"); CustomBinding binding = new CustomBinding( new PollingDuplexBindingElement(), new TextMessageEncodingBindingElement( MessageVersion.Soap12WSAddressing10, Encoding.UTF8), new HttpTransportBindingElement());

  38. Server side • 1. Define a Service with a Callback Contract • [ServiceContract(CallbackContract=…)] • [OperationContract(IsOneWay=true)] • 2. Implement the service • OperationContext.Current .GetCallbackChannel<ICallbackContract>() • 3. Host the service • No config support • May get much easier after Beta1

  39. Duplex services Demo

  40. 6 Silverlight and SEO

  41. What is SEO? From WikiPedia: Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results. Typically, the earlier a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine.

  42. Silverlight and search engines • Information contained in XAP file is not discoverable by a search engine  • Engine only cares about the source of the page • Consequence: no direct links to “pages” in SL your application

  43. <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <title>Silverlight Application</title> </head> <body> <div id="content"> <object data="data:application/x-silverlight-2," type="application/x-silverlight-2"> <param name="minRuntimeVersion" value="3.0.40305.0" /> <param name="source" value="ClientBin/MyApp.xap" /> <div class="down-level"> <h1>Down level content goes here. </h1> <p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet...</p> </div> </object> </div> </body> </html> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <title>Silverlight Application</title> </head> <body> <div id="content"> <object data="data:application/x-silverlight-2," type="application/x-silverlight-2"> <param name="minRuntimeVersion" value="3.0.40305.0" /> <param name="source" value="ClientBin/MyApp.xap" /> <asp:ContentPlaceHolder ID="DownLevelContent" runat="server"/> </object> </div> </body> </html>

  44. Silverlight and SEO Linq-to-SQL Silverlight • Silverlight and ASP should talk to same logic • Can be achieved through RIA services • And its helper controls App logic: Domain-Service EntFW WPF ... ASP.NET

  45. <ria:SeoSilverlightApplication EnableGPUAcceleration="true" EnableUserState="false" ID="SilverlightApplication" Source="~/ClientBin/SilverlightStore.xap" MinimumVersion="3.0.40220.0" Width="100%" Height="640px" runat="server"> <PluginNotInstalledTemplate> ... <asp:ContentPlaceHolder ID="SilverlightDownLevelContent" runat="server" /> </PluginNotInstalledTemplate> </ria:SeoSilverlightApplication> Silverlight and SEO • Use a domain service (RIA services) <asp:DomainDataSource runat="server" ID="SitemapDataSource" DomainServiceTypeName="MyApp.Web.NorthwindDomainService" SelectMethod="GetSuperEmployees" />

  46. Silverlight and SEO Demo

  47. 7 VirtualEarth in Silverlight

  48. Use VirtualEarth in Silverlight • Available through Virtual Earth Silverlight Map Control (currently in CTP) • Allows embedding VE in SL apps • Important for online apps that require geographical information • Rich SDK

  49. Excuse me, but AJAX can do that also... • Pro’s of using VE in Silverlight • Rich, interactive mapping experience – zooming, panning • Opens up ability to do things that are not possible with Ajax map such as scaling images and video in a seamless manner • Development environment working with Managed Code and Visual Studio development, debugging tools, unit tests for our developers and our customer developers • Performance improvements regarding number of items to render on the map – pushpins (UIElements), polylines, polygons

  50. This is VE in SL Neat, isn’t it...? 

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