As far as I can tell developing for Silverlight is free as long as you already have Visual Studio 2008. Does anyone know if MS has any plans to change that?
If anything, they will try to make it easier and cheaper. One recent program is called WebSiteSpark... which gives away all of the Microsoft Web Dev tools. This is because of increased competition between Microsoft and competing technologies such as those provided by Adobe.
You can develop Silverlight applications using Visual Web Developer Express, which is free.
And I don't think Microsoft has plans changing that, because that would mean they get a lot less new Silverlight developers, and it would take longer for Silverlight to catch up to Flash.
Silverlight framework itself is a free download from Microsoft. What exactly do you mean, when you say "developing for Silverlight is free"?
And if Visual Studio isn't your cup of tea, there's always Eclipse Tools for Silverlight which is also free.
Related
I am planning to switch from VS2010 to VS2013. I am vb programmer. Just need to confirm is this version stable or what sort of issues I may face if there any. I use to develop desktop Database application like POS etc.
Appreciate your comments.
Well, its a well stabled version. I recently switched from VS2008 to VS2013 and its way more good than VS2008 or VS2010.
Until now, i just found one problem with the VS2013.
If you are planning to use Crystal Reports for report development, you will be disappointed. There is no version of Crystal Report that embeds in VS2013.
Other than, if you are mainly developing db Applications, go explore the VS2013. You will not be disappointed for sure.
In 2008 Artur Carvalho asked for an Alternative IDE for Silverlight and was told to look at Visual Studio Express.
Is that still the valid answer in 2010 or are there other IDEs one should consider (cost/ OS it runs on / stability)?
I'm trying to get a feel for silverlight development before commiting cash. So I don't need enterprize level tools or a license to distribute ..
Would MonoDevelop and Moonlight be an option?
On Windows I haven't heard about anything besides Visual Studio Express 2010. On Mac you can use Eclipse for Silverlight.
As for me, I don't develop SL daily rather occasionally and starting with Blend 3 I can actually use Blend for most of my smaller personal projects and don't bother to install VS although I have a licence for it. Blend now has a decent support for Intellisense and most UI stuff is easier in Blend. Yes, Blend is not free.
First I've read loads of posts and sites that recommend going to http://silverlight.net/GetStarted/ to get started but I do not have visual studio and I'm not going to purchase it just to 'maybe' learn some silverlight that I'm not going to be able to use for a little while.
The reason being that I've already installed visual studio and all the other things required during a quiet period of work, then another project came up and by the time I got back to thinking about silverlight the trial period has finished.
I have not done C# or XAML (mainly Java, AS3 & MXML, hence the lack of MS tools) but I'd like to look into silverlight when I'm quiet to create some test projects and to determine where I can use it if anywhere. Is there a toolset that will let me learn and use all that is required without purchasing the software (perhaps it would have a watermark like the flex datacharts used to have, unless you purchased them, maybe an eclipse plugin - although I imagine I'm being a bit optimistic here).
If there isn't such a thing then perhaps MS should look into this, Adobe recently let anyone unemployed/students etc to get flexbuilder for free to increase its uptake. That would be great is MS did something similar.
If you are a student, you can get professional Microsoft tools for free through the Dreamspark program. http://www.dreamspark.com
You can download Blend preview 3 and visual studio 2010 for free and use it. You have the tools and knowledge now ;-)
Check out Bizspark too.
Allegedly, you can now use one of Microsoft's free "Express" development systems to develop Silverlight apps.
http://www.bluerosegames.com/SilverlightBrassTacks/post/You-can-now-write-Silverlight-apps-in-Visual-Web-Developer-Express.aspx
In addition to the free-as-in-free-beer options from MS that other answers mention: if you only want to play around with Silverlight for now, consider trying Moonlight -- it may not yet be ready for production work, but nevertheless usable for learning purposes.
One place you can go is to the express web site on Microsoft.com. You can get free, albeit trimmed back, versions of the current release of Visual Studio and SQL Server there.
You can also get a trial version of Expression Blend 2. Blend is a design oriented tool for creating Silverlight applications.
You can also usually find betas of upcoming releases without much trouble.
Silverlight + Eclipse:
http://www.eclipse4sl.org/download/
And how to workaround Express for SL
http://www.informikon.com/blog/howto-silverlight-and-visual-studio-express.html
Good luck
Braulio
I already own Visual Studio 2008 Team Version, and have an MSDN subscription...and I am an experienced ASP.Net developer.
What do I need to install to do Silverlight development, and can all of those tools be installed alongside my current "production" development machine (want to make sure there will not be any side effects).
I know I want to learn silverlight, but its not clear to me which tools are required and/or recommended in order to get started...
Thanks.
Download the Silverlight 2.0 SDK and Visual Studio 2008 Tools
Microsoft® Silverlight™ 2 Software Development Kit
Microsoft® Silverlight™ Tools for Visual Studio 2008 SP1
Check here for the links
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=4E03409A-77F3-413F-B108-1243C243C4FE&displaylang=en
Another great resource is the original:
http://www.asp.net/downloads/
AND
http://silverlight.net/GetStarted/
Hope this helps:
Andrew :-)
This link has pretty much every thing you need.
If you're already comfortable with VS development, you can just develop Silverlight in VS by downloading the Microsoft Silverlight Tools for Visual Studio 2008.
If you're more of a designer than devloper, then Microsoft Expression Studio may be better for you.
Follow the steps here:-
http://silverlight.net/GetStarted/
I have no problems using this stuff side-by-side with my regular development
Silverlight.net is a good place to start. All the tools are finalized so you should be able to install all things silverlight and be fine.
I am also trying to get started with Silverlight development.
Here is how I was getting started.
1.) To set up development environment: Getting started with Silverlight
2.) Web Sites to keep up with.
MSDN Silverlight Development Center
Shawn Wildermuth: He has turn from an ADO guy to a Silverlight guru/trainer.
Scott Gu's Silverlight tagged stories
I have Visual Studio 2003/5/8(+Resharper 4.1) installed on my machine along side siliverlight SDK and Expression Suite.
So far I have not seen any side effects even after installing all those tools on my dev machine after few months.
You can use Silerlight Spy to view the 'reflected' source code of any Silverlight application on the web. But, you can also use it to validate the structure of the components in your running application. The debugging experience reminds me of working with Firebug while trying to decipher the viusal structure of a web page.
In addition to the visual studio stuff, you should probably get blend and all of it's service packs.
It seems that Microsoft wants Silverlight to take off, yet I cannot find an easy way to develop in it without buying Visual Studio 2008. Has anyone out there found a way to get the silverlight development environment in the express editions of Visual Studio? Any other tools?
Here is a link for ya: HOWTO: Silverlight and Visual Studio Express,
I haven't tried it myself though.
They just released Eclipse tools for Silverlight (eclipse4SL) and I remembered this thread!
Apparently express support will come with the final release
Depending on what you consider "productive", you could work with XAMLPad for a lot of the basic declarative stuff.
The Moonlight project is working on an IDE called Lunar Eclipse, that I think they're eventually going to be integrating into MonoDevelop. Wikipedia says it's in the SVN repository already, but I don't know if there's any code for that which can actually be run effectively yet. I'd think if it's out there it'd be unusably basic if it even compiles... still, something to look into!
I only use Visual Studio as a text editor for xaml and C#. I don't use the designer in Visual Studio at all. You can put together most of your UI with Blend, open your C# files individually with Express. You don't have much intelisense in Visual Studio for the xaml anyway.
As #Brian stated, you can just use Expression blend and create any WPF/Silverlight apps. Especially if you have some Flash background/more interested in the interaction design (UX) I would recommend you to buy expression blend than VS2008.
You can write C# code in notepad and Blend will take care of the compilation.