SilverlightContrib releases Silverlight 2 Controls

Last week I had the pleasure of talking with the crew from the Herding Code podcast.  Among the questions was one about the open source community and Silverlight.  There was mention about MVCContrib and how that community sprouted almost instantly with the ASP.NET MVC initial releases.  I let the Herding Code crew know that I believe there already is a vibrant open source community around Silverlight and pointed to things like DevExpress’ AgDataGrid control which is free and provides source.  I also mentioned a project that did start right away around Silverlight 2 initial releases: SilverlightContrib.  The project, started by Page Brooks, had a good start and keeps on rolling now as they just released a set of free open source Silverlight controls!

The team of Page Brooks, Rob Houweling, Koen Zwikstra, and Shawn Wildermuth have just released “Alpha 2” of the project which includes:

• Color Picker
• Gauge Control
• Star Selector
• Enhanced Metafile (EMF)
• Cool Menu
• Libraries: Zip, Byte utilities, String utilities, Simple text parser, Animation Tweening, Wheel Mouse listener

While the project code is hosted at Codeplex, the team also has a blog at SilverlightContrib.org which has a Live Demo page that will show you demonstrations about the controls:

Color Picker:

Cool Menu (OSX style):

Gauge samples:

The code is available with the Ms-Pl license which is very permissive, so go and grab these controls…and better yet…contribute back to the project!!!  There are more than just controls there as I mentioned there are libraries as well – check out the Live Demo for examples.  I haven’t checked to see their compatibility with the Blend designer, but that is something you can tweak with yourself as needed.

Congratulations to Page and the team for a great community resource and a great release.  I look forward to more great things!