Silverlight 4 Tools for VS 2010 and WCF RIA Services Released

The final release of the Silverlight 4 Tools for Visual Studio 2010 and WCF RIA Services is now available for download. 

Download and Install

If you already have Visual Studio 2010 installed (or the free Visual Web Developer 2010 Express), then you can install both the Silverlight 4 Tooling Support as well as WCF RIA Services support by downloading and running this setup package (note: please make sure to uninstall the preview release of the Silverlight 4 Tools for VS 2010 if you have previously installed that). 

The Silverlight 4 Tools for VS 2010 package extends the Silverlight support built into Visual Studio 2010 and enables support for Silverlight 4 applications as well.  It also installs WCF RIA Services application templates and libraries:

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Today’s release includes the English edition of the Silverlight 4 Tooling – localized versions will be available next month for other Visual Studio languages as well.

Silverlight Tooling Support

Visual Studio 2010 includes rich tooling support for building Silverlight and WPF applications.

It includes a WYSIWYG designer surface that enables you to easily use controls to construct UI – including the ability to take advantage of layout containers, and apply styles and resources:

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The VS 2010 designer enables you to leverage the rich data binding support within Silverlight and WPF, and easily wire-up bindings on controls.  The Data Sources window within Silverlight projects can be used to reference POCO objects (plain old CLR objects), WCF Services, WCF RIA Services client proxies or SharePoint Lists. 

For example, let’s assume we add a “Person” class like below to our project:

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We could then add it to the Data Source window which will cause it to show up like below in the IDE:

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We can optionally customize the default UI control types that are associated for each property on the object.  For example, below we’ll default the BirthDate property to be represented by a “DatePicker” control:

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And then when we drag/drop the Person type from the Data Sources onto the design-surface it will automatically create UI controls that are bound to the properties of our Person class:

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VS 2010 allows you to optionally customize each UI binding further by selecting a control, and then right-click on any of its properties within the property-grid and pull up the “Apply Bindings” dialog:

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This will bring up a floating data-binding dialog that enables you to easily configure things like the binding path on the data source object, specify a format convertor, specify string-format settings, specify how validation errors should be handled, etc:

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In addition to providing WYSIWYG designer support for WPF and Silverlight applications, VS 2010 also provides rich XAML intellisense and code editing support – enabling a rich source editing environment.

Silverlight 4 Tool Enhancements

Today’s Silverlight 4 Tooling Release for VS 2010 includes a bunch of nice new features.  These include:

Support for Silverlight Out of Browser Applications and Elevated Trust Applications

You can open up a Silverlight application’s project properties window and click the “Enable Running Application Out of Browser” checkbox to enable you to install an offline, out of browser, version of your Silverlight 4 application.  You can then customize a number of “out of browser” settings of your application within Visual Studio:

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Notice above how you can now indicate that you want to run with elevated trust, with hardware graphics acceleration, as well as customize things like the Window style of the application (allowing you to build a nice polished window style for consumer applications).

Support for Implicit Styles and “Go to Value Definition” Support:

Silverlight 4 now allows you to define “implicit styles” for your applications.  This allows you to style controls by type (for example: have a default look for all buttons) and avoid you having to explicitly reference styles from each control. 

In addition to honoring implicit styles on the designer-surface, VS 2010 also now allows you to right click on any control (or on one of it properties) and choose the “Go to Value Definition…” context menu to jump to the XAML where the style is defined, and from there you can easily navigate onward to any referenced resources.  This makes it much easier to figure out questions like “why is my button red?”:

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Style Intellisense

VS 2010 enables you to easily modify styles you already have in XAML, and now you get intellisense for properties and their values within a style based on the TargetType of the specified control.  For example, below we have a style being set for controls of type “Button” (this is indicated by the “TargetType” property).  Notice how intellisense now automatically shows us properties for the Button control (even within the <Setter> element):

StyleIntellisense

Great Video - Watch the Silverlight Designer Features in Action

You can see all of the above Silverlight 4 Tools for Visual Studio 2010 features (and some more cool ones I haven’t mentioned) demonstrated in action within this 20 minute Silverlight.TV video on Channel 9:

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WCF RIA Services

Today we also shipped the V1 release of WCF RIA Services.  It is included and automatically installed as part of the Silverlight 4 Tools for Visual Studio 2010 setup.

WCF RIA Services makes it much easier to build business applications with Silverlight.  It simplifies the traditional n-tier application pattern by bringing together the ASP.NET and Silverlight platforms using the power of WCF for communication.  WCF RIA Services provides a pattern to write application logic that runs on the mid-tier and controls access to data for queries, changes and custom operations. It also provides end-to-end support for common tasks such as data validation, authentication and authorization based on roles by integrating with Silverlight components on the client and ASP.NET on the mid-tier.

Put simply – it makes it much easier to query data stored on a server from a client machine, optionally manipulate/modify the data on the client, and then save it back to the server.  It supports a validation architecture that helps ensure that your data is kept secure and business rules are applied consistently on both the client and middle-tiers.

WCF RIA Services uses WCF for communication between the client and the server  It supports both an optimized .NET to .NET binary serialization format, as well as a set of open extensions to the ATOM format known as ODATA and an optional JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) format that can be used by any client.

You can hear Nikhil and Dinesh talk a little about WCF RIA Services in this 13 minutes Channel 9 video.

Putting it all Together – the Silverlight 4 Training Kit

Check out the Silverlight 4 Training Kit to learn more about how to build business applications with Silverlight 4, Visual Studio 2010 and WCF RIA Services.

The training kit includes 8 modules, 25 videos, and several hands-on labs that explain Silverlight 4 and WCF RIA Services concepts and walks you through building an end-to-end application with them. 

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The training kit is available for free and is a great way to get started.

Summary

I’m really excited about today’s release – as they really complete the Silverlight development story and deliver a great end to end runtime + tooling story for building applications. 

All of the above features are available for use both in VS 2010 as well as the free Visual Web Developer 2010 Express Edition – making it really easy to get started building great solutions.

Hope this helps,

Scott

P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu

49 Comments

  • Suppose if we have two different datasources, how we can put both these in the same Silverlight Page? Here what you have mentioned is the data coming from only the Person table, what if we have more then one table or datasources.

  • Super Scott silverlight is growing up :))

  • Great improvements! good work!

  • Great news!

    But when will Blend 4 RTM?

  • Awesome!! Thanks for the detailed article. Silverlight rocks!

  • When will the localized installer packs be available?

    The english one won't install on foreign VS2010 installations...

  • Thanks Scott! I'm happy to see the mentioned IntelliSense improvements. Also it would be nice to have 'Go to Resource Definition' command in the context menu of the XAML code editor. Hope to see it in the next version.

  • Well done guys! This might be a silly question, but would I be able to use this update to still develop Silverlight 3 apps and still gain the benefit of the tooling support?

  • Can we now to profile the Silverlight application from VS2010(without command tool)?

  • Hey! Congrats with the release. But, what happened to Silverlight 3 support in the WCF RIA framework?

  • Always good explanation, thank you.

  • wow that's a great artical . thanks for it.

  • Will Silverlight apps developed using these tools run on Windows Azure?

  • Scott, for the POCO objects in the Data Sources toolbar, how can we sort/re-order the properties so that the silverlight form created by drag and drop on the editor orders the fields appropriately?

  • Hey Scott,

    I was wondering if you can point me to any examples/videos/etc of using Silverlight with existing enitity business objects and collections (not entity framework)?

    I have custom business objects and collections I use with Winforms and Asp.net development and want to learn how to leverage those objects doing Silverlight/WPF development.

  • Peter> Hey! Congrats with the release. But, what happened to Silverlight 3 support in the WCF RIA framework?
    .NET 4, VS 2010 and Silverlight 4 have key features that we could not have done without (e.g. partial trust capability in .NET 4 and non-exception validation in Silverlight). Given that, we decided to focus on providing the best experience on the current platform and not evolve .NET 3.5/ Silverlight 3-based version further. It was a difficult choice that we arrived at after much discussion on the RIA Services forum and advice from a number of early adopters. The version shipped at PDC 2009 is still usable for a few more months if you need time to migrate.

  • @RBeaubien, I would like to seem some coverage of how to do this as well. It would be very handy!

    I'm loving SL4 and WCF for RIA. Pure awesomeness!

  • First of all, Thanks a lot Scott. I have learned a lot from you and watching your various keynotes is just fantastic.
    I installed the Silverlight4_tools.exe. But I cannot find the Silverlight Business Application and the WCF Ria Services Library templates in the New Project - Silverlight tab. I uninstalled all the previous versions(silverlight toolkit RC etc). I had this problem before as well. For some reason I had to install WCF Ria Services separately. But then it complains that you already have an older version of WCF Ria Services installed, when I do that now. The installation did not complain about anything. Is there anything(log etc) I can do to figure out why it is not installing the above templates?

  • I follow silverlight softwares for long time.

  • Yay! Now the only thing left to be updated is Expression Blend. Any idea about the final release date of Expression Blend 4? RC is fairly stable, but RTM is eagerly awaited :-)

  • Someone questioned on twitter whether to do WPF since Silverlight4 does it all - including Out of the Box (OOB) as opposed to WPF ClickOnce. I say RIGHT ON! Yes, we now have in Silverlight4 a true subset of WPF CLR4. Then comes mobile phones, Windows Mobile 7!
    ... and we have a way to write once (or much closer to 1 time) using WCF+Entities (or Linq2Sql if we wish) and move away from the freakish nightmare of multiple codebases.

    Thanks!
    Dan

  • I'm yet to see in samples binding to a drop down list inside forms and grids. The samples show binding calendar controls great. But how to bind to a list that sources its items from the database.

  • C'est toujours un plaisir de vous lire. It's always a pleasure to read you.

  • @mohanbrij,

    >>>>>>> Suppose if we have two different datasources, how we can put both these in the same Silverlight Page? Here what you have mentioned is the data coming from only the Person table, what if we have more then one table or datasources.

    You can definitely add multiple data sources to a form. When you do you'll see two data-sources on the design surface and you can choose between them for databinding operations.

    Hope this helps,

    Scott

  • @t800t8,

    >>>>>>> But when will Blend 4 RTM?

    Blend will RTM in a few more weeks time. Not too long now!

    Thanks,

    Scott

  • @Sam,

    >>>>>>>> When will the localized installer packs be available? The english one won't install on foreign VS2010 installations...

    The localized versions will be available in a few weeks time. Sorry for the delay!

    Scott

  • @Jaans,

    >>>>>>> Well done guys! This might be a silly question, but would I be able to use this update to still develop Silverlight 3 apps and still gain the benefit of the tooling support?

    Yes - when you create new projects you can pick which version of Silverlight you want to target. VS 2010 can support both Silverlight 3 and Silverlight 4 projects.

    Hope this helps,

    Scott

  • @Sergey,

    >>>>>>> Can we now to profile the Silverlight application from VS2010(without command tool)?

    We don't have integrated IDE profiling just yet. It is one of the things we are working on for the future though.

    Hope this helps,

    Scott

  • @Peter,

    >>>>>>> Hey! Congrats with the release. But, what happened to Silverlight 3 support in the WCF RIA framework?

    The final release of WCF RIA Services only supports Silverlight 4 I'm afraid.

    Hope this helps,

    Scott

  • @Charlie K,

    >>>>>>> Will Silverlight apps developed using these tools run on Windows Azure?

    Yes - you can build Silverlight applications that run on Windows Azure just fine.

    Thanks,

    Scott

  • @Tom,

    >>>>>>> Scott, for the POCO objects in the Data Sources toolbar, how can we sort/re-order the properties so that the silverlight form created by drag and drop on the editor orders the fields appropriately?

    One of the features I didn't mention that is new with the SL4 tools is the ability to click on rows and move-up/down and re-order within the form. So you could drag/drop them onto the form and then re-arrange them as you'd like.

    Hope this helps,

    Scott

  • @RBeaubien

    >>>>>> I was wondering if you can point me to any examples/videos/etc of using Silverlight with existing enitity business objects and collections (not entity framework)?

    Unfortunately I don't know of a specific video off the top of my head - but you can find a ton of good content on www.silverlight.net to learn from.

    Hope this helps,

    Scott

  • @Jatin,

    >>>>>>>>> I installed the Silverlight4_tools.exe. But I cannot find the Silverlight Business Application and the WCF Ria Services Library templates in the New Project - Silverlight tab. I uninstalled all the previous versions(silverlight toolkit RC etc). I had this problem before as well. For some reason I had to install WCF Ria Services separately. But then it complains that you already have an older version of WCF Ria Services installed, when I do that now. The installation did not complain about anything. Is there anything(log etc) I can do to figure out why it is not installing the above templates?

    I think the problem is that within the File->New Project dialog you have the version filter set to target .NET 3.5 instead of .NET 4. This causes the RIA Services project templates to be filtered out. Change the drop-down to be .NET 4 and I believe you should be able to see and use them.

    Hope this helps,

    Scott

  • I install v30319.166, but the Program and Features shows the version as 10.0.30319.161. I hope it is still the latest version.

  • Scott,

    Currently we are using VS2008 in my office, Can we use Silverlight 4 with Visual Studio 2008?
    My other problem is I am browsing few sites which asks for Latest Version of Silverlight, but if I install the latest runtime. I am not able to debug my Silverlight 3 application with Visual Studion 2008. Is there any workaround ?

    So I am left with three option

    1. Stop browsing the Latest Silverlight Sites.
    2. Stop development Silverlight 3 Application.
    3. Forcefully upgrade to Visual Studio 2010.

    Please suggest.
    Thanks
    Brij Mohan

  • Hi Scott,
    Can you please write a blog post about when Silverlight is good, when WCF RIA services based ASP.NET apps are good and when ASP.NET MVC is good? Or should we combine all of them to get the maximum advantage. I might not be making sense here but thats the point of asking this question. If you can write a blog post about this, it would be great.
    Thanks.

  • Thanks Scott..yes, that was the case. I feel stupid now as that is something I should have checked before posting this question. Earlier I had the target framework always set to v 4 before.
    But recently I converted my VS2008 projects to VS2010 but we are still using .NET 3.5 so now by default new projects template opens with .NET 3.5.
    Thanks again.

  • I was wondering if you can point me to any examples/videos/etc of using Silverlight with existing enitity business objects and collections (not entity framework)?

    Unfortunately I don't know of a specific video off the top of my head - but you can find a ton of good content on www.silverlight.net to learn from.

  • I have a similar concent as RBeaubien.
    We are currently using our business objects and data access layer instead of using Entity Framework. Almost all the blogs and videos are showing guidance on using WCF RIA Services with Entity Framework.

    How can WCF RIA Services be used with business objects?

  • I hate to be the messanger bearing bad tidings, but this latest drop of Silverlight 4 tools Is breaking things. Previous sample applications and tutorials are broken. For instance the Silverlight IssueTracker sample has missing references that cannot be found in the system. After spending hours on the phone with MS Support on Friday de-installing and reinstalling VS 2010 and falling back to the previous (April) drop of the Silverlight Tools, IssueTracker is finally working again. Just me?

  • Scott,

    The new Silverlight-powered bing maps is awesome. You guys need to get buy-in from the rest of Microsoft's online presence to use Silverlight pervasively.

    Hotmail and Office Online should be first-class experience if someone has SL installed, and "works OK" if it has to rely on javascript.

  • Bill Glosser -- can you let me know (timheuer@microsoft.com) where this application you are referring to is located? My guess is that it is a sample on someone's blog? If so, it likely wasn't updated unless the author of that blog has done so. I think I know which one you are referring to but want to be sure. If it is a sample from PDC09, then yes things would need updating...the 'tools' didn't break it per se, but there definitely have been changes since PDC for RIA Services and the SDK...all of which are documented.

  • Hi Scott,

    Thanks very much for the info.

    Do you know when this Silverlight 4 Tools for VS 2010 and WCF RIA Services are going to be relesed in spanish so the ones we have this lenguage pack we can install it?

    Thanks very much!

    Regards,
    Joan.

  • Hi Scott,

    Why hasn't Microsoft really pushed Silverlight as the centerpiece of the "three screens and a cloud" strategy? You have the Silvrlight Showcase, but a "Silverlight App Store" is just sitting there waiting to be created. This should obviously be part of the Zune Marketplace, and the Zune desktop software should be the management tool not only for purchasing the apps, but to also launch the apps in an out of browser environment. It would be trivial for you guys to integrate the sllauncher.exe right into the Zune desktop software.

  • I just installed the Silverlight4_Tools and tried to follow Jesse Liberty's video to create a Silverlight Business Application by adding a new project with that template. I immediately got an error "Not Implemented", then, when I try to build, I get errors about missing references that I can't seem to add to the project. Some of them are projectname.Web.Resources, UserRegistrationContext, ValidationErrorResources. Someone broke the latest template. Please fix it.

  • Scott,
    Could you please clarify: Should we download the "WCF RIA Services Toolkit May 2010", dated 5/14/2010, as well as this "Silverlight 4 Tools for VS 2010 and WCF RIA Services"? If so, is the order of installation important? Any interdependencies?
    Thanks,
    -- Thomas

  • "We are sorry, the page you requested cannot be found."
    I'll refrain my envy to rant on the reliability of microsoft.com . Or not. =p

  • Unfortunately it brings me to a broken link. I'd like to get started with SL4, but will need the SL4 tools. "We are sorry, the page you requested cannot be found."

  • sorry the link is broken

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