SilverX is a free software which aims to help Silverlight designers/developers for converting existing Flash content to Silverlight.
It supports most of the Flash’s basic features like: vector primitives, images, texts & animations.
SilverX can be used for other scenarios as many applications has "export to SWF features" which means they can be converted to Silverlight now (ex: exporting CorelDraw vector graphics to SWF file and then convert it to Silverlight XAML).
The software has clipping layers, sounds, buttons & filters/effects in the roadmap.
Requirements: Windows OS
Descry is a project to demonstrate the power of data and information visualization as a communication tool.
Currently, there are 4 examples provided, all built with Silverlight & come with the source codes.
There are also 2 very nice articles shared on visualization:
For a demo, click here.
P.S. Descry is not a toolkit. It contains classes and fragments of code or design elements that can be reused.
Requirements: Silverlight
Open Video Player Initiative is a community project by companies like Adobe, Microsoft, Akamai & for sharing player code and best practices around video player development and monetization
It comes with 2 versions: for Flash & Silverlight.
A ready-to-deploy video player and a configuration tool (for easier configurations) is provided besides the source code.
Video player can be totally customized from colors to buttons & features included.
Demos for the player can found here.
Requirements: Flash or Silverlight
Infragistics Quince, a website with a stunning interface (built with Silverlight), is presenting user experience design patterns in a well-categorized format.
There is a wide list of patterns that vary from breadcumbs to alternating row colors and dashboards to forms.
Patterns can be browsed by:
- user tasks
- tag relationships
- wireframe
Even if the content is not what you are looking for, the usability of the website offers a quality UX inspiration.
OpenZoom is an open source framework for creating zoomable user interfaces.
The framework is similar to Silverlight’s Deep Zoom control (see WRD post), but for Flash.
The power behind OpenZoom is Flex MultiScaleImage component, which is built on top of the OpenZoom framework.
The name is same wih the Silverlight Deep Zoom’s built-in control & the usage is similar too.
The component has built-in support for keyboard / mouse activities & supports Deep Zoom, Zoomify & OpenZoom images.
For now, OpenZoom can sound to specific, but considering its abilities & usage areas, we’ll probably be hearing more about it soon.
P.S. The framework is so fresh & still in development but it can be downloaded (& it is documented).
Requirements: Adobe Flex
Seadragon is a technology, by Microsoft, for deeply zooming images of any size. It provides almost perfect transitions independent from the sizes of the images.
Seadragon Ajax is an interface for using/embedding this technology to any website.
Seadragon can be used in 2 ways:
Developers can customize viewers & controls with the Seadragon Ajax Library. It is also available at the Silverlight platform.
Visifire is a set of open source Microsoft Silverlight chart components.
Visifire lets you create stunning charts with ASP, ASP.Net, PHP, JSP, ColdFusion, Ruby on Rails or just simple HTML in minutes.
In order to use this great Silverlight chart library, you don’t need to know anything about Silverlight. Simple HTML knowledge is enough.
To see how beautiful the results are, check the Chart Gallery or Chart Designer.
Requirements: Silverlight
