Kurt Shintaku's Blog

If you want to get working on Silverlight, especially to prep for the release of 2.0, here is a list of useful resources to help folks get started:

• http://www.silverlight.net – Official Silverlight community site (downloads, videos, samples, tutorials, etc.)
• http://www.silverlight.net/ShowCase – list of notable live sites on the Web using Silverlight today
• http://www.silverlight.net/GetStarted – “Get Started” section of Silverlight.net, has links to the required bits, Visual Studio 2008, Expression Blend, Silverlight SDK, etc.
• http://www.silverlight.net/learn/learnvideos.aspx – Lots of useful videos including code and sample walkthroughs
• http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight – Silverlight section on the Microsoft.com site, has general info and news and links to tools and resources
• http://msdn.microsoft.com/silverlight – Silverlight developer center (samples, tutorials, links to more resources, etc.)

Some useful Expression resources:

Lynda.com is offering their Expression Blend v1 (6 hours) and Expression Design v1 (6 hours) free for everyone:

Expression Blend

• http://movielibrary.lynda.com/html/modPage.asp?ID=384 – 3 hrs Blend RTM (WPF) training … great for more advanced topics
• http://movielibrary.lynda.com/html/modPage.asp?ID=359  – 3 hrs Blend Beta … great for the foundation on Blend for WPF

Expression Design

• http://movielibrary.lynda.com/html/modPage.asp?ID=339 – 6 hours of great content

4 hours of free training from Total Training are also available at www.microsoft.com/expression covering each of the four Expression tools. 

Calling out some live sites that are more aligned to rich applications (instead of media experiences):

• http://www.tafiti.com – Silverlight presentation of Windows Live Search
• http://www.popfly.ms – Silverlght-based Web mash-up application (for example, Facebook, Twitter, Virtual Earth, etc.)
• http://www.windowsvista.si/main.htm?lang=1033 – Windows Vista simulator
• http://community.netikatech.com/demos/ – Reusable 3^rd party controls very similar to WinForm controls (or Office 2003)
• http://labs.componentone.com/silverlight/controlgallery/ – Reusable 3^rd party controls for building business applications
• http://demo.softwarefx.com/Silverlight/Chart/Galleries/ – “Chart FX” demo of reusable data visualization controls
• http://sirius.intersoftpt.com/ – “Apple OS” like reusable controls

And many sample applications that have source code available for download (full list available at http://silverlight.net/samples):

• http://silverlight.net/samples/1.1/SilverlightAirlines/Run/default.html – Silverlight Airlines
• http://silverlight.net/samples/1.1/chess/run/default.html – Chess
• http://silverlight.net/samples/1.0/Page-Turn/default.html – “Page Turn”
• http://silverlight.net/samples/1.0/Silverlight-Pad/default.html – “Silverlight Pad” sample app that shows XAML’s usage in Silverlight
• http://delay.members.winisp.net/SimpleSilverlightXpsViewer/ – XPS file viewer
• http://silverlight.net/samples/1.1/virtualearthviewer/ – Virtual Earth viewer