Silverlight Interview Questions and Answers

Answer - 31 : - Deep Zoom provides the ability to interactively view high-resolution images in Silverlight. You can zoom in and out of images rapidly without affecting the performance of your application. Deep Zoom provides smooth in-place zooming and panning. DeepZoom Composer allows you to create high resolution image compositions which are built for smooth zooming and panning. DeepZoom Composer is absolutely free, and is simple to use - just loads in all your high resolution images and makes your composition on screen. Deep Zoom Composer is a tool that allows preparing of images for use with the Deep Zoom feature in Silverlight 3.

Answer - 32 : - Silverlight and Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) are two different products from Microsoft, but have lot of overlap. Silverlight is a subset of WPF in terms of features and functionality. Silverlight is a Microsoft technology, competing with Adobe's Flash, and is meant for developing rich browser based internet applications. WPF is a Microsoft technology meant for developing enhanced graphics applications for the desktop platform. In addition, WPF applications can be hosted on web browsers which offer rich graphics features for web applications. Web Browser Applications (WBA) developed on the WPF technology uses XAML to host user interfaces for browser applications. XAML stands for eXtended Application Markup Language, which is a new declarative programming model from Microsoft. XAML files are hosted as discrete files in the Web server, but are downloaded to the browsers and converted to a user interface by the .NET runtime in the client browsers. WPF runs on the .NET runtime, and developers can take advantage of the rich .NET Framework and WPF libraries to build really cool Windows applications. WPF supports 3-D graphics, complex animations, hardware acceleration etc. Silverlight uses a particular implementation of a XAML parser, with that parser being part of the Silverlight core installation. In some cases, the parsing behavior differs from the parsing behavior in Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), which also has a particular implementation. In table format: Silverlight WPF Definition Silverlight is Microsoft’s latest development platform for building next-generation Web client applications. Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) is Microsoft’s latest development platform for building next-generation Windows client applications. Subset of Silverlight is generally considered to be a subset of WPF, and is a XAML-based technology that runs within the sandbox of a browser plug-in. WPF is generally considered to be a subset of .NET Framework, and is a XAML based technology. GUI Silverlight will be used in the development of Rich Internet Applications (RIA) for web client users. WPF will be used in the development of Rich Windows Graphical User Interfaces (GUI) for Windows client users. Support Cross OS, cross browser, cross device. Windows only. Software Required Silverlight is the add-on mechanism available for most browsers; in order to run Silverlight applications at client machines, we need to install Silverlight software on the client machine once. WPF, on the other hand, does not support any plug-in mechanism; instead, we need to install a completed WPF client application in order to use the WPF application at the client place. Framework support Silverlight has a very small, its own rich base class library to make the plug-in as small as possible. It is highly optimized for size, and is a small subset of the full .NET Framework, to be embedded within an application. WPF, on the other hand, has full access to the main .NET Framework and all its associated assemblies. Deployment Silverlight applications are hosted within a web server and a web page. To minimize client download size, Silverlight uses a XAP archive. A XAP archive is a zip-compressed archive of the Silverlight application, plus a manifest file describing the content. Visual Studio automatically generates the XAP archive when using the Silverlight project template. WPF applications can be deployed as standalone applications, ClickOnce applications, or XAML browser applications.

Answer - 33 : - Adobe Flash is the most popular competitor to Silverlight, supporting browser plug-ins and enabling the execution of rich content for the Web. Flash is not a new technology, and already has had a long life span as compared to Silverlight. But it does not have a huge community as expected; it may be because of the limited development tools which are not known to most developers. Flash uses ActionScript as the programming language and Flex as the programming environment, and most developers are far from these technologies. For ASP.NET developers, to extend their websites using Flash content is not so simple. They need to learn a development environment like ActionScript and Flex. Apart from that, there is no way to generate Flash content using server-side .NET code, which means it’s difficult to integrate ASP.NET content and Flash content. Silverlight aims to give .NET developers a better option for creating rich web content. Silverlight provides a browser plug-in with many similar features to Flash, but one that’s designed from the ground up for .NET. Silverlight natively supports the C# language, and uses a range of .NET concepts. As a result, developers can write client-side code for Silverlight in the same language they use for server-side code (such as C# and VB), and use many of the same abstractions (including streams, controls, collections, generics, and LINQ).

Answer - 34 : - Microsoft ASP.NET AJAX, a set of JavaScript libraries built into ASP.NET 3.5, is available as a separate download for ASP.NET 2.0. Being an integral part of ASP.NET 3.5 and the AJAX Controls Toolkit for ASP.NET 3.5, now ASP.NET AJAX client-and server-side libraries are more integrated with Visual Studio 2008. The client-side library allows you to implement client-level processing such as processing and validating information entered by the end user, refreshing a portion of the web page, and developing rich, interactive user interfaces. You can also efficiently integrate the client-side library components with the server-side ASP.NET controls library in asynchronous mode. The key technology driver of ASP.NET AJAX is scripting. In general, script-based web applications face several challenges due to different browser settings (e.g., JavaScript is not enabled by default) on PCs and mobile devices. As a result, scripting is often not always the best strategy for enterprises to use to develop secure and scalable RIAs. ASP.NET AJAX supports limited features of RIAs, and does not support effective multimedia integration, managed code-behind integration, or metadata and information management. Microsoft ASP.NET AJAX is a widely accepted model for building RIAs, but it is very likely that, having Silverlight as an option, .NET developers will migrate ASP.NET AJAX applications to Silverlight RIAs. Visit http://www.asp.net/ajax/ if you want to learn more about Microsoft ASP.NET AJAX.

Answer - 35 : - There are three different types of Layout controls provided by Silverlight: • Canvas - Position child elements absolutely in x, y space. • StackPanel - Position child elements relative to one another in horizontal or vertical stacks. • Grid - Position child elements in rows and columns. You have to add a layout panel to every XAML page you create. All other UI elements must be added inside one of the layout panels. Each page can have exactly one layout panel control.

Answer - 36 : - XAML files are usually compiled rather than parsed at runtime. But it also supports parsing during runtime. When we build a XAML based project, you will see it creates a g.cs extension in the obi\Debug folder. Therefore, for every XAML file, you will find a g.cs file. For instance, a MainPage.XAML will have a MainPage.g.cs file in the obi\Debug folder. In short, at run time, you actually do not see the XAML file. But if you want to do runtime parsing of the XAML file, it also allows that to be done

Answer - 37 : - • Microsoft Silverlight is a cross-browser, cross-platform, and cross-device plug-in for delivering the next generation of .NET based media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web. • Silverlight offers a flexible programming model that supports AJAX, VB, C#, IronPython, and IronRuby, and integrates with existing Web applications. • By using Expression Studio and Visual Studio, designers and developers can collaborate more effectively using the skills they have today to light up the Web of tomorrow. • By leveraging Silverlight's support for .NET, High Definition video, cost-effective advanced streaming, unparalleled high-resolution interactivity with Deep Zoom technology, and controls, businesses can reach out to new markets across the Web, desktop, and devices.

Answer - 38 : - The answer to this is no - a cross platform version of the .NET Framework is included in the 6 MB Silverlight 4 download, which means you do not need to have anything extra installed on the client in order to access Silverlight applications in the browser. The Silverlight version of the .NET framework includes the same CLR engine (same GC, type-system, JIT engine) that ships with the full .NET Framework, and a subset of the .NET Framework namespace libraries. You can see the full list of all classes/namespaces that are included by opening up the Object Browser when you create a new Silverlight application using Visual Studio

Answer - 39 : - Adobe Flex, Java FX, Adobe Flash are some of the other RIA technologies besides Silverlight.

Answer - 40 : - RIA stands for Rich Internet Applications, which are Web applications with rich user interfaces including media elements such as audio, video etc. You can think of them as being similar to powerful and rich desktop applications, except that RIA applications are Web based.