What are some of the useful concepts to know about when building Silverlight apps?

Question

The Silverlight(& WPF) space seems to have a whole new nomenclature around it so at times I'm having a hard time figuring our what is important and useful to research a bit more.

For example I 'know' about the MVVM pattern but I'm looking for things that are a bit smaller in scope, that is topics, ideas, programming constructs that might be used in implementing MVVM and would need to know before hand.

So basically I'm looking for some of the key topics and concepts that people have found useful or are important when creating a Silverlight apps. And maybe why it is useful or important and when\where it might be applied or used.

Thanks.

Answer 1

I might suggest you start by widening your scope to include WPF as well since in many cases the design patterns and coding patterns overlap somewhat. Obviously Silverlight is a slimmed down version of WPF but since many of the methods and styles of design are similar it may help to look at some WPF practices as well.

Answer 2

If you are a newcomer, don't bother with MVVM yet. It could easily overcomplicate everything. I recommend you to build your first one or two applications without it. (See this question.)

The concepts you should get yourself familiar with:

• XAML syntax and the concept of code behind
• Styles and Templates
• What UIElement, FrameworkElement, Shape, Control, and other abstract classes are
• Bindings (there are quite a few types of them)
• How to create custom controls and styles for them (In SL, generic.xaml)

If you feel familiar with the above (and you feel comfortable with XAML, or someone in your team already does), read Silverlight and WPF best practices and then you can get started with MVVM.

Answer 3

I find the two most important things to learn to fully utilize WPF/Silverlight are first Data Binding and second the Templating model. Data Binding is key to many applications, but IMO Templating is where WPF/Silverlight really shines.