What's the best technology for a Tetris-like game for Windows Phone 7? Silverlight or XNA? The best is in terms of easier to learn and faster to implement.
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/hu/windowsphone7series/thread/2dcd11bb-7093-4057-b0e9-24451b32a5b5
http://create.msdn.com/en-US/education/catalog/article/which_product_for_windows_phone
Those are some links you may find useful, I have never developed in silverlight. But the first topic has some questions about it and the second is an article on app hub on which is right for wp7.
this question is difficult because what is easy to learn? maybe for you XNA can be better, maybe not.
do you know this tutorial?
http://create.msdn.com/en-US/education/tutorial/2dgame/getting_started
I am trying to learn Silverlight 4.0...i have 3+ years of Exp in .NET but do not know about silverlight...
So request you to suggest me how to start to learn Silverlight 4.0...
I there any good book available in market which teach me or any url...
Also i want some dummy expamples..
Thankx in advance.
Google is your best friend. There are so manny resources available for Silverlight, so that is is impossible to list them all here. Some of my personal recommendations are
wrox silverlight 4 book
Channel 9 has allot of videos
concerning silverlight
browse msdn tutorials:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc163404.aspx
and last but not lease
silverlight.net =>
http://www.silverlight.net/learn/videos/all/
And when you think you have a good understanding of the workings of silverlight / WPF you can switch to the MVVM pattern:
http://csharperimage.jeremylikness.com/2010/04/model-view-viewmodel-mvvm-explained.html
Check the official website of SilverLight which is http://www.silverlight.net/.
It contains videos and tutorial that you can start with.
Silverlight 5 beta is coming very soon. I want to explore Silverlight Game development skills. Could you please suggest some good sites where I can learn Silverlight game development easily. I Googled and Binged for the same but did not get good results.
Thanks in Advance.
I don't have anything for SL 5, but Mike Snow's blog has many game programming tips: http://www.michaelsnow.com/
The site used to be here: http://blogs.silverlight.net/blogs/msnow/default.aspx
For example, here's a Rendering event for your main game loop: http://blogs.silverlight.net/blogs/msnow/archive/2008/09/29/silverlight-tip-of-the-day-50-main-game-loop-revisited.aspx
There has been a lot of talk surrounding the likes of WPF. I am wondering if WPF will become a new standard for graphical interactive user interface design. Is this where we are headed in terms of windows interfaces? Will it really take off like everyone says it will?
See also
Learning Windows Forms vs. Windows Presentation Foundation
(Contains links to many other useful posts on WPF).
I think there are plenty of applications still done in Win32, MFC and of course, WinForms. I think it would be a wise choice to add WPF to your tool belt. Should you drop everything and learn it today? That's up to you. I am seeing more demand for WPF. It's not overwhelming, but neither was C#/WinForms in 2001.
So the long winded answer is that you just have to take the chance. No one knows if WPF apps will dominate the market. I'm leaning towards the possibility and I'm also thinking Silverlight may be a real player in web apps moving forward. Since there are transferrable skills between the two, I'm hedging my bet a little bit by continuing to learn WPF.
Please see also Is it better to use WPF over WinForms
Sorry it's not a concrete answer.
You're asking us to predict the future :)
I think a better way to approach this is to look at the other technology you could learn if you didn't learn WPF. I would weigh the various tradeoffs and pick the one that was more valuable to me.
For instance if the choice was WinForms or WPF I would certainly go with WPF. WPF has a steeper learning curve than WinForms. However once you get past that learning curvie it is so much easier to work with. WPF can do in a few lines what took several hundred lines of a custom control in WinForms.
WPF is an ultimate graphic platform for Windows. Win32's GDI was a "first try", WPF is a "permanent structure". For the combination of Windows and flat displays (f.e. 3d displays might require something else), it will never be replaced. So learn it, it is a good commodity.
There is hell lot to learn in WPF. You need to die and reborn as a GUI programmer.
But is it worth the effort. Why?, Here is my answer.
Since you are asking this question, I assume you are Microsoft technologies based programmer.
As the direction of MS is towards WPF for GUI development, I see no choice. Win Forms will last long for probably 2 years more. Since the cool look and feel of WPF make users to ask for more and more WPF applications than Win Forms. As you know for many users GUI is the S/W :)
Now if you are non MS based programmer, probably from Java, I say WPF has lot of similarities with Java Swing. But it is a very-very big super set of Swing.
To have Swing catchup with WPF might take at least 2/3 years and by that time WPF might be ruling the word and I don't expect Swing to be much easier than this, if not difficult.
As silverlight is kind of platform independent and as it's model is similar to WPF, I predict WPF is going to rule at least for next 6/7 years if not a decade.
I believe and hope MS would make things much more easier for the programmers so that learning curve would be shortened or delegated to GUI artiists (using expression blend).
Hope I answered your question.
Microsoft has a habit of throwing everything in the wall and seeing what sticks... The Pocket PC platform, J#, and so on. With regards to WPF, it is too early to tell if adoption will increase in the future.
If you have programmed .NET Winforms and/or Webforms, the learning curve is not that steep. I would suggest dabble with it but don't throw all the eggs in the proverbial WPF (or even Silverlight) basket. As the others have noted, better to treat it as just another tool in your arsenal.
WPF has been around for a few years now and Microsoft's decision to rewrite Visual Studio (2010) in WPF is a good sign that it is here to stay. Remember, this is one of the most popular IDEs on the market and a sign of intent from the guys at Microsoft.
My organization adopted the technology last year and while it has a steep learning curve - you really have to learn to think in different terms - it has paid dividends in the richness of applications we are able to develop. I love winforms and am a big fan of asp.net but what blows me away about WPF is that you are provided with the building blocks and the possibilities are endlesss...
If I were you I would learn WPF for the experience and reap the rewards later. Don't forget - you'll also be learning the core of Silverlight if you adopt WPF - these are two technologies that in my humble opinion are going nowhere!
Using WPF is way better then WinForms and you need to have different mindset.
All I can say is Microsoft should have used HTML syntax when creating WPF and Silverlight applications so that front end coulde reused or at least for silverlight apps so that people that develope on Desktop could reuse the same code when writing browser apps that could be used anywhere.
If HTML5 becomes better I'm sure it will become popular as trend is toward open source (cheap technologies). No doubt WPF is far better for developing desktop apps then anything else I've used and c# is more powerfull as language (not speed) and how it's used.
Yes start learning it. It's applicable to Silverlight (though not a 1 to 1 mapping), it's also a very similar model to Abobe Flex's paradigm of MXML So you'll be getting 3 wins for the price of 1.
We're starting to see work come in that calls for it, so there's definitely a good reason to have it on the old utility belt.
I am begining to learn it Matthew MacDonald has writen a super book about it. I recommend that book to everyone (Infact I was surfing internet to learn WPF till I came across with his book and one more thing "stay away from Microsoft site (MSDN)"
Yes, if you will be designing desktop applications on the Windows platform, WPF is the emerging standard. WPF replaces the Win32 API that has dominated the Windows desktop until now, and Microsoft expects a similar lifetime for the WPF platform.
Besides, it's way cooler.
And then there is Silverlight, of course.
As the title says :)
I've been waiting for Wrox to release "Professional silverlight 2.0" for ages but it's been delayed by nearly a year and I want to have a Play with silverlight.
Ignoring the silverlight.net site, does anyone know of any good beginners tutorials that focus on coding in Visual Studio instead of Blend?
Jon
I'm currently running through this set of tutorials. Have been quite useful as a very basic primer into the world of Silverlight.
I wrote a 57-page article for Wrox Press called "Jumping from ASP.NET to Silverlight 2". It is focused on ramping up on the basics, and doesn't involve Blend. And it's seven bucks.
Link is here
Jesse Liberty's blog has masses of useful learning material including tutorials and videos - highly recommended.
Take a look at this MSDN Silverlight page.
While not strictly a tutorial, my collegue has been reading Pro Silverlight in C# 2008 and from what I heard, he's very pleased with it. Sure, it's not free, but maybe it'll hold you over until Professional silverlight 2.0 is released? :)
I've been looking at Silverlight 2 In Action and Silverlight 2 Unleashed and pretty happy with both
While not exactly tutorials, the videos on the MS official Silverlight website has good videos on all kinds of topics.
start here
http://silverlight.net/Learn/
And watch the many screencasts here
http://silverlight.net/Learn/videocat.aspx?cat=10
Videos have been very helpful to me:
http://channel9.msdn.com/continuum/tutorials/
http://www.microsoft.com/showcase/en/us/details/9b002e70-78c2-4741-9093-93e42228d8d1