Part 5. Making the most of the platform

With traditional web development technologies, complex applications often hit roadblocks when it comes to integrating with the local system. They have difficulty accessing local resources, working with windows, and even doing things as simple as printing a report with proper page breaks. Silverlight has evolved to the point where developers and designers are able to create these truly complex and rich applications, often in a business context.

In the next five chapters, you’ll explore the ways Silverlight integrates with the local operating system to provide a better experience. First, you’ll see the most basic form of integration: creating windows. Silverlight has window and pop-up/dialog solutions that range from simple on-page simulated windows all the way to full-fledged operating system windows on both Windows and Mac.

Next, you’ll look at ways to integrate navigation into your applications, both integrating with the browser history and maintaining your own separate history. You’ll use some of the great built-in templates to help you structure the applications in a navigation-friendly way.

Then, because one of the most common points of integration is working with local files, you’ll examine the various ways that Silverlight can work with files both in partial trust and elevated trust applications.