Thursday, March 8, 2012

Windows 8 – the New Site for Silverlight Programmers - Silverlight Application to Windows 8 Metro Style Application

Right now I don’t have much feeling to speak about surface computing and Silverlight. I have much more feeling about Windows 8! Yes Windows 8 is a new game of HTML/JavaScript, Metro UI, Pointer, Animation, Effective business Application, Dashboard. It has the ability to run HTML/JavaScript directly on the desktop. Its Windows reimagined and reinvented from a solid core of Windows 7 speed and reliability. I’m not much worried about a welcome screen snowed under touch screen with full of Tiles for each app directly. Being a hard code .net Presentation Framework programmer I bet Metro UI is going to open good market place for Silverlight/WPF programmers. Microsoft Silverlight browser plug-in is strong enough framework and maintained wisely to kick flash! Remember about “out of browser” capabilities of Silverlight. I believe Microsoft already planed for Windows 8 before introducing Silverlight in Market. Silverlight is used and tested by thousands and thousands of users. Framework is strong enough now. I’m sure it will take very less time  for a programmer to port Silverlight into Desktop completely.

Following are few required changes to be done while converting/porting Silverlight application to Metro Style application.

  1. Namespace changes: System.Windows should be replaced by Windows.UI.Xaml in all classes.
  2. Few APIs/concepts where removed in the Metro Style framework. It includes Effects, OpacityMask, Easing Functions etc.
  3. No MouseEvents: There are no mouse-specific input events such as MouseLeftButtonDown. Instead it provides PointerPressed, PointerReleased, PointerEntered or PointerExited events.
  4. XAML namespace changes: Now XAML namespaces no longer reference specific assemblies.
  5. No support for TypeConverter yet.
  6. No support yet for RadialGradientBrush in Metro Style app.