Datasheet

11
Chapter 1: Adding Silverlight to Your Web Development Toolkit
When the page comes up, the screen displays numerous small images of the
memorabilia, but each time you click an image, you zoom in to it. As you
zoom in to the image, it first appears blurred and progressively becomes
sharper. This is because the whole photograph (which can be several
megabytes in size) does not load in one go; instead, it loads progressively
as you need it. You can also see several animations on the site. Creating an
application like this using plain HTML would be very difficult and would lack
the rich interactivity that is provided by Silverlight.
Figure 1-2:
Silverlight
running
the Hard
Rock Café
Memorabilia
site.
Another site that showcases Silverlight’s user interface is the Woodgrove
Financials sample application, shown in Figure 1-3. This application uses
fly-out menus, dynamic graphs, and slick animation.
See the list of images to the left of the screen? On the site, as you move your
mouse cursor over them, a menu slides out, giving additional information
about what you can do. Clicking the Mortgage option, for example, brings up
an interactive graph that shows you how much money you can save on your
mortgage. Clicking Trade History brings up an interactive display of graphs
and tables, where you can filter your stocks, find information on them, and
review the stock prices over a period of time.
The sample application has several features, which you can explore by
visiting http://cookingwithxaml.com/meals/financials/default.
html. The application is highly interactive. As noted previously, creating a
rich user interface for an application such as this would be extremely difficult
using plain ol’ HTML.
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