Had a really fun lunch session from the creators of the ASP.NET Ajax Control Toolkit. Looks like Microsoft released a Silverlight Control Toolkit yesterday, which will be followed later with a WPF Control Toolkit out of band from Visual Studio/.NET Framework releases. And, like the AJAX Control Toolkit, we'll be getting full source code, unit tests and project harnesses. Good stuff, indeed.
About the Delivery Model
A core runtime will be created and maintained by Microsoft, and coupled with an SDK/Tools release. This out of band release will be the first we'll see as developers (no timeframe mentioned). In addition, CodePlex projects will be created and maintained to keep control builds in 4 quality bands. Those bands are:
- Experimental - Controls may or may not be included in a future release
- Preview - Useful for most folks, but final version may have changes
- Stable - Controls are good for 90%+ of scenarios, this is considered close to final beta quality
- Mature - Full RTM quality, no breaking changes unless there's a security issue.
What's included?
In addition to getting source code, you get a bunch of other really cool stuff. Here's what's included:
WPF Parity Controls - DockPanel, WrapPanel, TreeView, Expander, Label, ViewBox, HeaderedContentControl, HeaderedItemsControl
Silverlight UI Components - Autocomplete textbox, NumericUpDown, Charting (supports Line, Pie, Column, Scatter charts, courtesy of Dundas). These controls will later be made available on WPF
Unit Tests - Automated unit test framework for Silverlight
Sample Sites - Sample web site projects that demonstrate appropriate usage of all the new controls in the Silverlight control toolkit.
Themes - Expression Dark, Expression Light, Shiny Blue, Shiny Red, Rainier Orange, Rainier Purple. Themes are managed through the ISM (Implicit Style Manager) -- a new component in the Silverlight control toolkit.
What's Coming?
Some additional controls are coming (Accordion, ListView). Also, some major issues will be fixed in an upcoming release, as well as charting improvements, etc. These will be in a minor release later this year.
Sometime around Mix '09, they'll add a MediaPlayer, TimePicker, Carousel, Rating, MaskedTextBox and more themes!
Even further down the road -- InPlaceEditing, AppointmentCalendar, ImageMap, FileUpload, Menu, SlideShow
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