Edit 2011-12-10: This article is compatible with the final version of Silverlight 5 (5.0.61118.0).

This post is part of a mini series about Silverlight 5:

• Implicit Data Templates
• Multi-Column Layouts
• Markup Extensions
• Multiple Windows 
• Trusted Applications
• Incremental Search
• Data Binding

Having multiple windows is a common thing in desktop applications, especially in business environments. With Silverlight being positioned as a LOB platform, it was only logical that at some point we would see a feature of multiple windows in Silverlight too. More...

Edit 2011-12-10: This article is compatible with the final version of Silverlight 5 (5.0.61118.0).

This post is part of a mini series about Silverlight 5:

• Implicit Data Templates
• Multi-Column Layouts
• Markup Extensions
• Multiple Windows
• Trusted Applications
• Incremental Search
• Data Binding

Even though all Silverlight developers are using markup extensions all the time, a lot of them are not aware of what they actually are. The XAML parser is able to convert attribute values (strings) into objects. With markup extensions, the parser can be advised to reference an already existing object somewhere else for this. For example, the StaticResource Markup Extension uses a key to evaluate a reference to a resource defined in a resource dictionary. The Binding Markup Extension creates an expression to defer the evaluation until run time, so the actual property value can be retrieved by using the data context. In this post we'll take a look at how you can create your own extensions in Silverlight 5 and what the limitations are. More...

Edit 2011-12-10: This article is compatible with the final version of Silverlight 5 (5.0.61118.0).

This post is part of a mini series about Silverlight 5:

• Implicit Data Templates
• Multi-Column Layouts
• Markup Extensions
• Multiple Windows
• Trusted Applications
• Incremental Search
• Data Binding

A lot has been said about text and text rendering in Silverlight. People, including myself, were not exactly satisfied with the quality of text rendering in the first versions of Silverlight, especially with small font sizes. Thankfully this situation has improved a lot in later versions, and it will continue to become better in Silverlight 5 with features like Pixel Snapping. Additional options like control over character spacing and the possibility for multi-column layouts seem like a start to reach out to people like typographers and others who like to deep dive into text layout and create more interesting designs. In this post I take a look at multi-column layouts, hopefully including some details you haven't heard about yet. More...

Edit 2011-12-10: This article is compatible with the final version of Silverlight 5 (5.0.61118.0).

This post is part of a mini series about Silverlight 5:

• Implicit Data Templates
• Multi-Column Layouts
• Markup Extensions
• Multiple Windows
• Trusted Applications
• Incremental Search
• Data Binding

Silverlight 4 introduced the concept of implicit styles. That is, styles which are not referred to by key explicitly, but that are applied to a certain type of visual elements automatically. The next version of Silverlight introduces implicit data templates, a concept that works in a similar way for your data types. This feature once again is a step of Silverlight towards its bigger brother WPF where implicit data templates have been available already. More...

In the parts of the series so far, we have looked at individual features of game programming on the phone in an isolated manner. We learned about graphics, animations, input, audio and others, and for each of these samples, we created new empty game projects and put the logic in the main game screen and few helper classes. In a real world scenario, your game will combine various different aspects and features, and you naturally would want to structure your game a lot more. Once again some of these details are also subject to restrictions given by the certification requirements. In this article, we will take a look at the concept of "places" and game screens that can be used to create a navigational structure for your game. As always the article includes full source code. You can read it over at Silverlight Show.

No, this is not an April Fools' joke :). As announced in the post where I explained how I created and optimized the dynamic trees of my Eco Contest 2011 entry "Do you twig?", I'm releasing the full source code of the project here. The entry was chosen for the first runner-up award by the judges, which I was and still am very happy about. In the following, I explain some details of the application. You can find the source code at the end of the post. More...

What would a game be without sound effects and music? Naturally Windows Phone 7 offers enough possibilities to add a rich acoustic experience to your apps and games. However, due to the nature of the device, there are some things to keep in mind. Even with the lack of real multi-tasking, you don't have the whole platform at your disposal exclusively. The user may already listen to music from the media library when they start your game, for example. In addition, a mobile device may also be used in an environment where noise is not welcome. These are things you have to consider when you add audio to your game. Some of these aspects are even regulated in the certification requirements for Windows Phone 7 applications and are a potential source for certification failure if implemented incorrectly. In my new article, I'll take a look at how audio can be integrated in your games and what the implications are for playing sounds and music in Silverlight and XNA. As always, source code for the discussed samples is available for download.

Read the full article on Silverlight Show.

A few days ago, Google has released a first beta version of an AdMob SDK for Windows Phone 7. People seem to be interested in that especially outside the U.S., because at the moment, Microsoft's own Advertising program is only available to developers based in the United States. Here is a short walk-through of how to use the AdMob SDK in your app and what you can expect from it at the moment.

Please keep in mind that this post is based on a beta version, and that the final experience and feature set may be different from what I observe and describe here. More...

In my extensive post about how you can upload images to an SQL database from your Silverlight client (read it here), I mentioned some potential problems with the amount of data that is being uploaded. The issue arises because when you load an (compressed) image from disk, it is converted to an uncompressed bitmap in memory. Storing that image in your database can result in data that in extreme cases can be up to 100x or even more bigger than the original image. In this post, I'll show you how you can improve the code to achieve a much better result with regards to that. More...

Detection of and reaction to collisions is a very fundamental element in games. As soon as it has moving components of some sort, it is likely that collisions are of concern. For example, the player character may collide with the scenery of the game. The player may also collide with other characters (enemies, monsters etc.), and of course many games work with projectiles that can hit various other parts on the game screen. But what exactly are collisions in a game, and what are good ways to detect and handle them? This article tries to give answers with several samples and explanations. The full source code is included for download.

Read the full article at Silverlight Show.