Silverlight 4 Tools, WCF RIA Services and Themes Released

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Silverlight 4 Tools, WCF RIA Services and Themes Released

posted @ Monday, May 17, 2010 12:24 PM | 26 Comments

This morning we published the final release of the Silverlight 4 Tools for Visual Studio and WCF RIA Services. In April, when Silverlight 4 was released, the tools were still in “RC” status. Today, they are no longer and are officially released. There is no new update to Silverlight itself, but these tools are the final bits of this version.

Get the Tools

If you have a clean machine you can get everything you need using the Web Platform Installer by clicking on the link at the Silverlight community site. This will install Silverlight Tools, Silverlight, WCF RIA Services, Silverlight Toolkit and the RIA Services Toolkit in one step for you.

NOTE: If you have a previous version of the RIA Services Toolkit installed you MUST uninstall that prior to installing any new version.

Optionally you can grab the direct Silverlight 4 Tools installer here. This will install the tools and WCF RIA Services for you and can be installed on top of any existing RC installation as it will uninstall previous tools and WCF RIA Services for you.

Watch some info about the tools and RIA Services release:

Silverlight TV: Silverlight Tools Released
Silverlight TV: WCF RIA Services 1.0!

New Themes Released

Today we also are making available the final version of the 3 new application themes we developed. These include the Accent Color, Windows 7 and Cosmopolitan themes. The download contains Visual Studio 2010 template installers, Blend 4 compatible templates as well as the raw resource dictionary assets and sample projects. Final versions for the RIA Services business application template will be coming as we identified some last minute changes we need to make. You can, of course, use the raw assets and tweak them into your existing applications as needed.

NOTE: A word on ‘Cosmopolitan’ name change. Many have asked if Metro is being renamed. The term ‘Cosmopolitan’ refers only to the name given to this application template and is arbitrary. Metro is the code name for the design language found in Windows Phone 7 and other applications. It is not a literal theme name or anything else and is a term referred to internally. This template simply was renamed to Cosmopolitan.

You can download the themes here: Silverlight 4 Application Themes. There is a README_FIRST file explaining the different files.

Thanks for your patience as we finalized the release of the Silverlight Tools for Visual Studio and these accompanying templates.

tags: silverlight, expression blend, sltools, visual studio, riaservices, ria, wcf, xaml

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution By license.

Comments

Weidong Shen

5/17/2010 1:47 PM | # re: Silverlight 4 Tools, WCF RIA Services and Themes Released

That is great. Thank you!
Tom

5/17/2010 3:02 PM | # re: Silverlight 4 Tools, WCF RIA Services and Themes Released

Thank you so much Tim! Finally!
DJanjicek

5/17/2010 3:46 PM | # re: Silverlight 4 Tools, WCF RIA Services and Themes Released

That's indeed great news! I was waiting for an offcial release of the new themes! Thanks.
Kiran

5/17/2010 5:14 PM | # re: Silverlight 4 Tools, WCF RIA Services and Themes Released

Great. By the way, any idea when the final piece, Blend 4, likely to RTM? Likely to be this week?
Per Grimskog

5/17/2010 5:58 PM | # re: Silverlight 4 Tools, WCF RIA Services and Themes Released

Thanks, this is great! I'm happy to see the strong support and commitment for Silverlight and WCF RIA - it is indeed a very strong play to build enterprise level apps for the Web.
I guess I'm only waiting for the WCF RIA support for the Windows Phone :)
Rachida Dukes

5/17/2010 6:14 PM | # re: Silverlight 4 Tools, WCF RIA Services and Themes Released

Bravo for the final release, I hope you continue adding more video tutorials.
Thanks again,
Rachida
Pooran

5/17/2010 9:39 PM | # re: Silverlight 4 Tools, WCF RIA Services and Themes Released

Awesome.. looking for download buttons :)
Thanigainathan.S

5/17/2010 9:56 PM | # re: Silverlight 4 Tools, WCF RIA Services and Themes Released

Excellent news. We were eager to get this thing installed in our PC's. Thank you very much.
Axel

5/18/2010 4:18 AM | # re: Silverlight 4 Tools, WCF RIA Services and Themes Released

Just downloaded the themes... then looked at the Windows 7 theme... is it just me or all the fonts are completely blurry in Silverlight 4? This is a complete showstopper for me, I will never use a rendering technology (SL, WPF, whathever) which results in such poor on-screen results.

ClearType (as in GDI/GDI+) is as close to perfection as one can get but all I've seen so far from the "new stuff" is simply horrid, with exceedingly bad font rendering making the entire thing completely useless, sorry.
Ben McCormack

5/18/2010 5:04 AM | # re: Cosmopolitan

I much prefer "Metro" when thinking about the Windows 7 design language (and even the related themes). To me, "Cosmopolitan" screams bright pink.
John Jones

5/18/2010 3:35 PM | # re: Silverlight 4 Tools, WCF RIA Services and Themes Released

Tim,
Thanks for providing the extra tips (e.g. that it uninstalls previous versions). I was looking for that information, and didn't find it anywhere else. You might want to double-check about the Silverlight Toolkit -- That did not appear in the list that would be installed or uninstalled when I ran the setup.
timheuer

5/18/2010 3:45 PM | # re: Silverlight 4 Tools, WCF RIA Services and Themes Released

John -- the Toolkit is not a part of the tools chainer. It is independent right now so this tools installer doesn't install or uninstall it. You can, however, use the Web Platform Installer mentioned above to install everything in one swoop.
Eric Swanson

5/19/2010 9:09 AM | # re: Silverlight 4 Tools, WCF RIA Services and Themes Released

Oh yeah! Thank you Tim. I'm still trying to figure out what to build with my new Telerik Premium package I won at the AZ Scott Guthrie event. Any SL4 tool ideas?
Eric Swanson

5/19/2010 4:31 PM | # re: Silverlight 4 Tools, WCF RIA Services and Themes Released

??? I have an existing website, so I thought it would be nice to add a RIA-enabled Silverlight project to it. *LOUD BUZZER NOISE* The "Silverlight Business Application" creates a website without letting me choose an existing site. When I attempt to replicate all of the settings, my XAP isn't getting deployed to the ClientBin folder. I attempted to solve that problem ("associate Silverlight XAP deployment with this web project" puzzle) by creating a simple Silverlight Application and then checking the project settings, project msbuild file, etc... Nothing! Magic?! Help master Tim! :)
timheuer

5/19/2010 4:35 PM | # re: Silverlight 4 Tools, WCF RIA Services and Themes Released

Eric - to associate RIA Services and Silverlight to an existing web project, add a Silverlight project first (it will then give you the option of associating it with the web project) and choose to 'enable RIA services'.

In doing this you'll get pretty vanilla implementation -- the Biz App Template is more of a greenfield starting point. You could choose to add a new Silverlight Nav App and get a lot of the legwork, but not the same template.
fab

5/20/2010 1:21 PM | # re: Silverlight 4 Tools, WCF RIA Services and Themes Released

Ever since i installed this update when editing xaml it takes about 1.5 seconds for a keystroke on show up on the screen and if i select something from the intellisense drop down it immediately crashes the ide. Anyone have a similar experience and know how to fix it ?
CarlMon

5/21/2010 1:45 AM | # Possible bug?

Thanks for the great themes!

I am using Cosmopolitan in a production project and found that the ScrollBar style (in CoreStyles.xaml) ties up most of the CPU when there is a ScrollBar on the screen. I am using the raw XAML resources. Anyone have a similar experience and recommendation?
Andrew

5/22/2010 5:38 AM | # re: Silverlight 4 Tools, WCF RIA Services and Themes Released

Nice themes ! We need more themes !
How the theme is delivered is nice, easy to use, custom, bla2
Andrew

5/22/2010 5:46 AM | # re: Silverlight 4 Tools, WCF RIA Services and Themes Released

@fab
Turn off xaml designer,
Tools-Options-TextEditor-Xaml-Misc
check Always open document in full Xaml view

@CarlMon
I use those 3 themes on 1 project, "but i only use what i need"
don't see any performance problem yet
my similiar but not same when using toolkit theme
and u do this
<theme:RainierPurple><yourControl></theme:RainierPurple>
that thing is slow
Claudio Nunes

5/23/2010 10:10 AM | # re: Silverlight 4 Tools, WCF RIA Services and Themes Released

Only C# versions of the themes? What about vb.net?
Mark Wint

5/23/2010 11:29 PM | # re: Silverlight 4 Tools, WCF RIA Services and Themes Released

Tim, I've been trying for days to disable the password strength on the Business template. I've tried to edit the domain service by editing the min length and the regular expression, but neither seems to make a difference. I've also tried editing the web.config membership, as I did in the ASP.NET projects, but this didn't work either.

Any idea how I can change the complexity? I only need 5 characters and no special characters, as it's an internal app.

Thanks
yuety.xie

6/8/2010 6:51 PM | # re: Silverlight 4 Tools, WCF RIA Services and Themes Released

谢了...
GG

6/25/2010 10:02 PM | # re: Silverlight 4 Tools, WCF RIA Services and Themes Released

Hi I am new to Silverlight 4 & WCF. I am confused whether to go for WCF Data services or RIA Services with my project. My project is a simple book search & read kind of portal.
Pooran

6/27/2010 10:03 PM | # re: Silverlight 4 Tools, WCF RIA Services and Themes Released

Tim,
I am getting blurry font rendering as explained by 'Axel' in the comments. Any fix? I use Windows7 and have Clear Type enabled. I disabled Clear type.. but the problem persists.
Any fix?
Scott

7/11/2010 7:21 AM | # re: Silverlight 4 Tools, WCF RIA Services and Themes Released

Hi Tim,
Has MS taken down the links to the new themes because there is no button for downloading them from that link you posted above, and neither does it redirect me to the alternate Bing site.

Thanks!
Terrence

7/14/2010 12:39 PM | # re: Silverlight 4 Tools, WCF RIA Services and Themes Released

Scott, look down at the bottom of that page and there are 3 download links.

Hope this helps.

Terrence.