Microsoft Silverlight the next step for Dynamics CRM 4.0

Simon Phillips, 26 August 2010

Microsoft Silverlight is a web application framework that provides functionalities of integrating multimedia, graphics, animations and interactivity into a single runtime environment. This application is becoming a big thing in the developer’s world, particularly with the recent release of the Silverlight 4 and the cool new features that it delivers. The list is quite extensive and may take a while to fully understand and appreciate; I know it took me a while to grasp all the things that I could now do with Silverlight 4.

1. Editor with full intellisense for XAML and C# and VB languages.

2. Fluid interface enhancements advance application usability through animation effects.

The two features that I listed above are just the bee’s knees, with intellisense all Silverlight applications can now be built quicker and with more accuracy.

The picture above shows what I was able to achieve with no knowledge of xaml which is the language used by Silverlight, it was only possible because of this new intellisense if it were not for that I could not have achieved that.

<!--Stacked Bar Chart-->

                <telerikChart:RadChart x:Name="Stacked">

                    <telerikChart:RadChart.DefaultView>

                        <telerikChart:ChartDefaultView>

                            <telerikChart:ChartDefaultView.ChartArea>

                                <telerikChart:ChartArea LegendName="HBDLegend" NoDataString="No time has been logged yet">

                                    <telerikChart:ChartArea.AxisX>

                                        <telerikChart:AxisX LabelRotationAngle="45">

                                        </telerikChart:AxisX>

                                    </telerikChart:ChartArea.AxisX>

                                    <telerikChart:ChartArea.DataSeries>

                                        <telerikChart:DataSeries LegendLabel="Customer Work">

                                            <telerikChart:DataSeries.Definition>

                                                <telerikChart:StackedBarSeriesDefinition />

                                            </telerikChart:DataSeries.Definition>

                                            <telerikChart:DataPoint XCategory="Simon" YValue="15" />

                                            <telerikChart:DataPoint XCategory="Paul"  YValue="5.5" />

                                            <telerikChart:DataPoint XCategory="Gayan" YValue="34" />

                                            <telerikChart:DataPoint XCategory="Roshan" YValue="12.5" />

                                        </telerikChart:DataSeries>

                                        <telerikChart:DataSeries LegendLabel="Internal Work">

                                            <telerikChart:DataSeries.Definition>

                                                <telerikChart:StackedBarSeriesDefinition />

                                            </telerikChart:DataSeries.Definition>

                                            <telerikChart:DataPoint XCategory="Simon" YValue="10" />

                                            <telerikChart:DataPoint XCategory="Paul" YValue="8.5" />

                                            <telerikChart:DataPoint XCategory="Gayan" YValue="6" />

                                            <telerikChart:DataPoint XCategory="Roshan" YValue="4.5" />

                                        </telerikChart:DataSeries>

                                   </telerikChart:ChartArea.DataSeries>

                                </telerikChart:ChartArea>

                            </telerikChart:ChartDefaultView.ChartArea>

                            <telerikChart:ChartDefaultView.ChartLegend>

                                <telerikChart:ChartLegend x:Name="HBDLegend" UseAutoGeneratedItems="True" Header="Hours By Developer" IsEnabled="False" />

                            </telerikChart:ChartDefaultView.ChartLegend>

                            <telerikChart:ChartDefaultView.ChartTitle>

                                <telerikChart:ChartTitle Content="Hours Per Developer" />

                            </telerikChart:ChartDefaultView.ChartTitle>

                        </telerikChart:ChartDefaultView>

                    </telerikChart:RadChart.DefaultView>

                </telerikChart:RadChart>

The code above is just a glimpse at one of the charts in the dashboard. As you can see it takes quite a bit just to produce one chart so now with the built in intellisense this can now be finished faster and without mistakes making production time quicker and more economic.

To learn more about these features, visit the MIX10 site to view sessions from the conference! I hope that this was helpful to teach you about all the new features in Silverlight 4.

This list was resourced from the following sites.

http://www.silverlight.net/getstarted/overview.aspx

http://www.silverlight.net/getstarted/silverlight-4/

Silverlight controls used Telerik

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