What's New in Silverlight 5 by LearnNowOnline

What’s New in Silverlight 5

What’s New In Silverlight 5 • • • • •

Data Binding Improvements Text Controls Media Trusted Applications

Data binding improvements • • • • • •

Data binding debugging Ancestor RelativeSource binding Implicit data templates UpdateSourceTrigger=PropertyChanged Binding in style setters Custom markup extensions

Data binding improvements â&#x20AC;˘ These updates are very welcome changes for developers using MVVM in their applications

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Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM) • • • • •

It’s a separation pattern, like MVC or MVP Improves structure / separation of concerns Enables better designer / developer workflow Enhances testability Made possible by the robust data binding capabilities of Silverlight and WPF

MVVM Structure View •XAML •Data bindings

View Model •Model of the View (or View of the Model) •Properties and commands

Model •Domain model / business logic •Services, persistence, everything else

Connecting the pieces of MVVM • View -> ViewModel • ViewModel exposes properties and commands that

the view binds to • ViewModel implements INotifyPropertyChanged to relay change notifications to View • The View’s DataContext is bound to the ViewModel, making all of it’s properties and commands available to the entire View

Connecting the pieces of MVVM • ViewModel -> View • ViewModel contains domain objects from the

Model and exposes relevant portions of it to the View • ViewModel calls services to fetch or save data to the Model

Key elements of MVVM • INotifyPropertyChanged • PropertyChanged event

• ICommand • Execute • CanExecute • CanExecuteChanged event

MVVM Basics

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Data binding debugging • Allows breakpoints on data binding statements • Exposes information on the data binding source, errors, etc… • Makes troubleshooting data binding issues really easy!

Data binding debugging

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Ancestor RelativeSource binding • New binding mode brought over from WPF • Allows a child element to bind to properties on its parent • Very useful within item templates in an items control

Ancestor RelativeSource binding

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Implicit data templates • Another binding feature from WPF • Defines a template to be used whenever Silverlight tries to display a particular type • In Silverlight 4, we had to explicitly specify a template for our custom types • Very useful when binding to a list of different subclasses – not limited to a single item template now! Learn More @ http://www.learnnowonline.com Copyright © by Application Developers Training Company

Implicit data templates

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New UpdateSourceTrigger • Adds “PropertyChanged” option to available UpdateSourceTriggers – also from WPF • When used, the source of the binding (on our ViewModel) is updated whenever the property on the View is changed

PropertyChanged UpdateSourceTrigger

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Custom markup extensions • Markup extensions are the parts of XAML that are surrounded by {curly braces} • Binding, StaticResource, DynamicResource, etc…

• They provide a value – one that is often not known until runtime • Silverlight 5 now allows us to create our own markup extensions

Custom markup extensions

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Binding in Style Setters • Styles are useful and widely used to define a consistent look and feel to our applications • Until now, binding in the setters within styles were now allowed • Silverlight 5 allows us to create binding statements within stlyes

Binding in style setters

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What’s New In Silverlight 5 • • • • •

Data Binding Improvements Text Controls Media Trusted Applications

Text improvements • • • •

Character spacing and line height TextOptions – pixel snapping OpenType support Linked text blocks for multi-column and flowing text

Character spacing and line height • “CharacterSpacing” and “LineHeight” properties • TextBox, TextBlock, RichTextBox, RichTextBlock

• CharacterSpacing calculated based formula: Spacing (in pixels) = (font size * Value) / 1000

• LineHeight is the spacing between lines, in pixels

Linked text • RichTextBlocks can now specify a RichTextBlockOverflow element that text will flow to when full • RichTextBlockOverflow elements can specify additional overflow containers • Limited only to read-only RichTextBlocks

Linked text, character spacing and line height

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TextOptions • TextFormattingMode • Ideal, Display (pixel snapping)

• TextHintingMode • Fixed, Animated

• TextRenderingMode • Auto, Aliased, Greyscale, ClearType

OpenType Support • • • • • •

Ligatures – glyphs with more than one letter Contextual Alternates Stylistic Sets Variants – superscript and subscript Fractions Much more in the Typography class!

TextOptions and OpenType

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What’s New In Silverlight 5 • • • • •

Data Binding Improvements Text Controls Media Trusted Applications

What’s New in Silverlight 5

Learn More! â&#x20AC;˘ This is an excerpt from a larger course. Visit www.learnnowonline.com for the full details!

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