Datasheet

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Chapter 1: Adding Silverlight to Your Web Development Toolkit
In addition to all these features, Silverlight, out of the box, contains around
60 controls. Control is another name for tools such as text boxes, buttons,
and other elements that appear on Web sites. Part II of this book covers all
the fundamentals you need to get started on working with the most commonly
used controls. We even show you how to create your own!
Accessibility for people with special challenges has become a very important
aspect of modern Web sites, and Silverlight supports this user accessibility
by providing features that allow applications to be read using screen readers
and by helping developers create functionality and features, within applications,
that do not depend on the mouse alone but can be accessed using keyboard
shortcuts. So, for example, if you have a menu in an application that usually
pops up when you right-click the mouse, the user can also access it using a
keyboard shortcut.
Silverlight also supports internationalization and localization, which allow
applications to be written to support other languages and cultures. Not all
countries speak or even use English, of course, and even the countries that
do use English have varying date formats and currencies.
Silverlight Plays Well with Others
Silverlight does not actually replace HTML, ASP.NET, or JavaScript. In fact, it
can complement these technologies to provide a pleasing, rich user experience
for existing Web sites. The Document Object Model (DOM), which is a standard
model for accessing all the user interface objects in an HTML page, can be
manipulated from Silverlight, and some Silverlight functionality can be triggered
from JavaScript. All these technologies actually work well together. You can
find out how to integrate these technologies together in Chapter 15.
Silverlight Has More to Offer
Than Just a Pretty Face
The user interface is the primary focus of Silverlight. It is also the most
visible part as far as the users are concerned. But there is more to Silverlight
than just creating pretty user interfaces.
In Part III of this book, we tell you how you can use Silverlight to access
data that is available on the Web. This data can be in the form of Web
services, which are small units of functionality that can be accessed by other
applications. Such a unit of functionality can be anything from providing
weather information for a certain region to complex business functionality
such as managing product inventory or an employee database.
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