Silverlight 2 was released on
October 13, 2008. Here we are just about two weeks after that date and more Silverlight goodness is being released into the wild. This goodness comes in the form of the exciting new
Silverlight Toolkit.
The
Silverlight Toolkit is a set of controls and features that enable even richer interactive applications. These applications can be enhanced with the help of some new styling and theming features available in the
Silverlight Toolkit. In addition, this toolkit provides a flurry of new controls including the
AutoCompleteBox,
DockPanel,
Expander,
Label,
NumericUpAndDown,
TreeView,
ViewBox, and
WrapPanel. Each of these controls empowers you to go in new directions with your applications. However, the control that I find most exciting is the
Chart control.
The
Chart control is a FREE charting solution provided by Microsoft and does
not require any additional installation by your users. Currently, this solution empowers you to present data through five different types of charts. These types include bar, column, line, pie, and scatter charts. These five chart types will be detailed over the next three blog posts. But first, take a look at the default look and feel of these charts over some fictional data.
As you can see, the
Chart control can vividly display data in four traditional ways. If there is another way you want to show your data, don’t worry. The
Chart control provides an extensible control model that can be leveraged by the community (including you and me). Because of this, it won’t be long before the most highly requested charting features are added. For instance, you may want a pyramid chart, which is not currently available. You, me, or someone else can contribute to the
Chart control through
CodePlex. Because of this, I would recommend
subscribing to the Silverlight Toolkit’s project updates. For now though, I would like to show you how to use the
Chart control that is currently available.
I will cover the
Chart control in the next post. This post can be found
here. Hopefully after this post you will feel primed to use the
Chart control in your Silverlight applications. You can learn the details of building Silverlight applications in
Silverlight 2 in Action (
free content,
review 1,
review 2,
review 3,
review 4 [and yes, I’m using this series as a way to promote this book :)]). If you like this series, I hope that you will share it with others by either blogging or twittering about it.
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3 comments:
I also like Visifire at www.visifire.com
Import Project="$(MSBuildExtensionsPath)\Microsoft\Silverlight\v2.0\Microsoft.Silverlight.Csharp.targets"
Replace this in .csproj to see the project working in VS.
Thank you
Chad, this is a great book. I'm reading the Chapter 2. The Table 2.12, the Description for "Platform" is "the Operating System". Actually, it's not true 100%.
I'm testing the app and it's showing the value "Win32" and not "WinXP".
I will test in other OS but as I see, "Win32" is not "WinXP". No?
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