R – What are the topics to ramp-up on when starting Silverlight\Web development

silverlight

I've been asked to do some work on an existing Silverlight project, mainly extending it a bit and doing bug fixes as needed. But there are a couple of ASP.Net pages too and a WCF service to deal with too. My background is desktop development with .Net so I think this is a good opportunity to start getting more involved in Web development.

So I'm trying to figure out what background knowledge I need for a project like this. Clearly I need to get familiar with Silverlight, but I'm not sure what other Web technologies, etc I need to ramp up on for this project. Obviously I would like to know as much as possible but in reality with limited time and resources I really need to focus on what I important in the near term for this project. Then expand my knowledge as things arise.

The things I'm thinking that are important in the immediate future are:

  1. The basics of Web Development (I'm thinking this might be the most important\fundamental area to build a good foundation)
    • But what are consided the basics?
    • What is technology\language independent?
    • What is important for Silverlight?
  2. The basics of ASP.Net (since there is some ASP.Net code)
    • What are the basics? ASP.net seems so huge, I have a 1000+ pg book here which seems daunting.
    • If you focus on Silverlight is knowing ASP.Net important, or is ASP.Net something I will continually run into?
    • How does ASP.Net MVC fit into the overall development picture and especially as related to Silverlight?
  3. The basics of WCF
    • As compared what?

Any suggestions\comments on the list above?

What other topics\technologies will I run into if I continue doing Web development?

Note: Beyond this project I would focus on the Microsoft stack.

Best Answer

Generally speaking the amount of knowledge of ASP.Net you need to do Silverlight development is very very low.

Silverlight applications are hosted in a browser, usually via the <object> tag. This can sit on an asp.net page or a html page. The Silverlight template creates that for you, so you can forget its there and just get on with the Silverlight app.

Of course if you are integrating into an ASP.net environment (for example, islands of Silverlight sprinkled through an ASP.net site) then thats another thing. There are ways to get Silverlight talking to the HTML dom via the HTML Bridge but its not necessary. Really depends on what you are developing and integrating with. (new site vs existing)

I avoided ASP.net for as much as i could as the richness compared to desktop (WPF) just wasnt there. Silverlight changed all that. Its a Rich world on the web now!

Best place to start learning Silverlight is www.silverlight.net on the getting started part of the site. great Quickstarts and tutorials there.

Good luck

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