Datasheet

16
Part I: Illuminating Silverlight
Visual Studio
To write, compile, and debug programs, you need an Integrated Development
Environment (IDE). Visual Studio is the IDE of choice for building applications
that run in Microsoft’s .NET environment. Visual Studio supports languages such
as VB.NET and C#, and you can use it to create Silverlight applications, too.
Silverlight Tools for Visual Studio
Silverlight Tools for Visual Studio is responsible for adding all the necessary
elements to get Visual Studio to build Silverlight applications. It adds the
following: Silverlight project templates; the Silverlight Toolbox, which
contains all the Silverlight controls such as buttons and text boxes; and the
Silverlight Software Development Kit (the SDK). It also offers other useful
features such as debugger support.
Expression Blend
You use Expression Blend to create user interfaces using visual tools for
both WPF and Silverlight. It provides a much better environment for creating
user interfaces than Visual Studio does. For instance, you can create a user
interface just by dragging and dropping controls onto the design surface,
whereas you would have to manually code most of this using Visual Studio.
Expression Blend is actually part of a suite of applications collectively known
as Expression Studio. Although you can install just the applications you need,
designers generally tend to install the entire suite of the Expression Studio
applications because these tools help in visually designing the user interface.
They complement each other quite well. The other applications in this suite
are as follows:
✓ Expression Web: This application allows you to not only author Web
pages in HTML but also design, build, and manage entire Web sites.
It helps in creating Web sites that use Cascading Style Sheets (CSS),
and it integrates with Microsoft’s ASP.NET and PHP programming
environments. Expression Web, shown in Figure 1-4, complies with Web
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