Part 6 – ClientUI 3 For Silverlight and WPF. Delivered.

Few days ago, I posted a blog that details several aspects that are very fundamental in a real-world business Silverlight application specifically on the navigation architecture, authentication and security, MVVM and more – and more importantly, how we engineered ClientUI from the ground-up to address all these challenges and enable them to work in concert.

After a long journey of development, today is the day we’ve all been waiting for. The wait is over – we’re excited to officially announce the ClientUI Release Candidate (RC) which is now available for public download. More details below.

Silverlight & WPF Developers – What Can ClientUI Do For You?

Beyond just a set of components, ClientUI takes Silverlight development to a whole new level by putting together MVVM-ready framework, supercharged navigation framework with nested navigation support and role-based authentication, WPF-style routed command and events and powerful, easy-to-use drag-drop controls. And with over 60 rich UI controls with strict ISO-standards conformance, now you can quickly and rapidly create any types of rich Silverlight applications where your creativity is the only limit.

Since ClientUI resembles a wide range of feature-sets ranging from architecture to development to runtime, it gives all the tools needed in RIA development for different types of users, from system architects, web developers to UX designers and end users. Read our recently published newsletter to discover what ClientUI can do for you.

Download Intersoft ClientUI 3 RC

Visit ClientUI.com and click on the Download button to start your download, then follow the guided step when you reach the download form. We’d love to hear your download experiences, tell us when you got couple minutes!

Select Platforms

If you only want to evaluate ClientUI, make sure you choose Web Setup in the download instruction that sent to your email. When you’re asked to select platforms, select only Silverlight and WPF platforms. This allows the Setup to download only the necessary files required for ClientUI development. See the image below.

By default, the Setup will include all development platforms. If you also develop ASP.NET apps, I highly recommend you to install it as well – we’ve got 8 amazing, most-wanted ASP.NET widgets, from iPhone-style sliding menu, accordion, slider, list box to calendar and progress bar.

Read the Getting Started

Rest assured that you get only the best-in-class user experiences with WebUI Studio! After installation, a Getting Started document will appear. Each year, we revamped our Getting Started to make it even easier and faster for you to find the information you need. To quickly jump start with ClientUI, make sure you click on the Silverlight part such as shown in the red-highlighted mark below.

Explore The Samples

ClientUI Release Candidate ships with three reference samples for Silverlight 4 which demonstrate the use of various ClientUI components in line-of-business scenarios. The solutions are provided in Visual Studio 2010 format for best development experiences.

To learn how to create Silverlight navigation application that used role-based security combined with WCF RIA Services, child navigation and many other features explained in my previous blog, open Business Application Sample.

To learn how to create Silverlight application that uses MVVM pattern and supports WPF codebase, check out Contacts MVVM Sample. If you’re interested in the WPF counterpart instead, we also ship the Contacts MVVM Sample under the WPF program group. Learn how commanding, input binding, UI controls and view models can work together in both Silverlight and WPF project.

If you prefer to see the samples in action, simply click on the Launch* shortcuts.

Note that the controls and features-based samples will be made available in the RTM release along with the complete documentations and walkthrough.

Create Your First ClientUI Silverlight Project using Visual Studio 2010

After exploring the samples, it’s now the time to build your own compelling, rich business Silverlight applications.

You can get started pretty much straightforward. Launch Visual Studio 2010 and click New Project. Then browse to the Intersoft Solutions > Silverlight node in the Installed Templates. In this Release Candidate, we shipped 6 professionally-designed templates that you can use to quickly start your next project.

All templates are designed with our high-standards development experiences quality – so all you need to do is simply pressing OK, wait for few seconds and press F5 to run the project. You don’t have to manually add the references or do any sort of extra stuff – we’ve done it for you.

Regardless of your experiences and skill level in Silverlight development, your best shot would be a MVVM Business Application. It already includes full-featured registration and login form with standards-compliance user experiences built into it. We’ve even taken care the WCF RIA Services connection and all sort of server providers configuration.

Experience First-Class Designer Support

When we say first-class, truly it is! Upon installation, everything is up and ready – nothing extra needs to be done at your end. As well as Visual Studio 2010, this very statement is true for Expression Blend 3 and Blend 4 environment.

If you’re UI/X designer who preferred Blend more than Visual Studio, the next time you open Blend, get ready with a vast array of tools you can use to build your next-generation RIA apps! All ClientUI assets are grouped in Intersoft ClientUI group so you know where to look when you need them.

Our professional artists have even designed each icon very thoroughly and delicately – from small to large icons which simply blends in the Blend environment. This allows you to conveniently walk through the layers in your project and easily identify the visual elements through unique icons. See screenshot below.

Enjoy a whole new level of RIA development experiences!

Get Started with Your Business Application Project in 5 Minutes

A picture worth a thousand words. A video worth a billion words. Watch how you can get started with your immersive business application in less than 5 minutes. It shows how ClientUI enables a true rapid Silverlight development – adding new pages, adding new navigation buttons, run it and everything will just work – effortlessly.

Get The Support You Need

Unlike other vendors, we officially support ClientUI even in this Release Candidate version. As the RC already includes RTM-identical product bits, you can eventually use it in the projects that you currently working on.

As you jump start with ClientUI, I’m sure you’ll have questions around the usage, features, or how-to achieve specific tasks using the various ClientUI controls. We’ve opened a new ClientUI forum so you can discuss anything related to Silverlight and WPF development. And again, we’re the only US-based component vendor with professional 24-hour support service during business days. So feel free to post your questions to the designated forum mentioned above and expect a same-day response from our support engineers.

The Promised Demos

In the part 3 of my ClientUI blog, I’ve explained the MVVM concept and how it can be elegantly used with advanced UIs such as windows and dialog boxes. Numerous readers have emailed me to ask if they can see a running demo to see the solution in action. And here it is – the Contacts MVVM online demo.

More Coming Next

 

 

If you followed my ClientUI blog series from the start, most probably you’ll still remember the Contacts application that I showcased in the ClientUI Part 3 blog. If not, I suggest you to read and try the sample mentioned just in the previous section.

Continuing on the story that I left for a while in the part 3, we’ll take the simple Contacts application and make it a part of something bigger – a richer composite application that enables your applications to scale and grow in a way that never possible before.

In the next post, I’ll unveil how the simple Contacts application that we’ve built sometime ago, can be loaded into desktop-style interface without code recompiling and still working as it is – resulting into something similar to the image below.

Welcome to the future of RIA experiences. Stay tuned…

All the best,
Jimmy.