Silverlight benefits with SharePoint 2010 and to setup development environment for Silverlight application.

This article shows you overview of Silverlight benefits with SharePoint 2010 and to setup development environment for Silverlight application.

Benefits of Integrating Silverlight with SharePoint

§   Silverlight RIAs can offer a rich user experience. You can take full advantage of the rich visual capabilities offered by Silverlight and include them in a SharePoint site. For example, you can offer an interactive balanced scorecard with animated graphs, rich navigation capabilities, and context menus.

§  Silverlight supports Smooth Streaming technology, which lets you host and deliver HD video from your IIS servers, including SharePoint.

§  Silverlight 3 has Out-of-Browser (OOB) feature. OOB lets you install and run your Silverlight application out of the browser on the local machine. By surfacing the OOB application on the start menu or desktop, you give a user a more desktop-application-like feel. You can also detect your online status and respond accordingly—for example, caching data locally. The OOB features in Silverlight 4 have expanded this capability to allow your OOB applications to run with full trust and instantiate COM objects.

§   Silverlight feature allows Silverlight controls to communicate with other running Silverlight controls. This means that you can create complex applications that work together as single applications.

§  SharePoint 2010 contains a number of Silverlight features out of the box. A Silverlight Web Part lets you add a Silverlight application to your SharePoint site simply by adding a Web Part and setting the path to the Silverlight application’s .XAP file.

§  Efficient applications: As you can work with the power offered by the client, you can process data without the need to make requests to the server all the time. This way, you can create load-balanced solutions.

§  Access to the Client OM (Client Object Model): When you have to access data and services offered by the SharePoint 2010 server, you don't need to create your own complex infrastructure. There is no need to add additional layers. Lots of the processing can be pushed down to the client.

§  Leverage your existing Silverlight knowledge, components, and applications: You can build new capabilities quickly from existing Silverlight components and applications, integrating them with SharePoint 2010.

Development Environment Setup for Silverlight:

1.     Download the files and installed it in below order.

Application's name	Download link	File name	Description
Silverlight 4 Tools for Visual Studio 2010	http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=b3deb194-ca86-4fb6-a716-b67c2604a139	Silverlight4_Tools.exe	Install Silverlight 4 Tools in order to create Silverlight 4 applications in the Visual Studio 2010 IDE, using XAML and C#. It will co-exist with previous Silverlight SDKs (Software Development Kits). This new version of Silverlight Tools also includes the WCF RIA Services package.
Silverlight 4 Offline Documentation (in CHM format)	http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?familyid=B6127B9B-968C-46C2-8CB6-D228E017AD74&displaylang=en	Silverlight_Documentation.EXE	This is Silverlight 4 official documentation.
Expression Blend for .NET 4	http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=88484825-1b3c-4e8c-8b14-b05d025e1541&displaylang=en	Blend_Trial_en.exe	This tool will enable us to create content that targets Silverlight 4 and to create rapid prototypes with the Sketch Flow tool.
Silverlight Toolkit (Updated for Silverlight 4 compatibility)	http://codeplex.com/Silverlight	Silverlight_4_Toolkit_April_2010.msi	This toolkit provides a nice collection of Silverlight controls, components, and utilities made available outside the normal.

2.     Once the installations have successfully finished, run Visual Studio 2010 or Visual Web Developer 2010 (or later).

3.     Select File | New | Project. Select Visual C# | Silverlight under Installed Templates in the New Project dialog box. You will see many Silverlight templates, including Silverlight Business Application and WCF RIA Services Class Library, as shown in the following screenshot: