You dreamed of it, Microsoft did it: Silverlight 6 is finally coming out, nine years after the release of Silverlight 5.

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What 's new ?

Microsoft is once again disrupting the web with Silverlight 6.

The main developments are:

  • Available on mobile
  • Integration of augmented reality
  • Support for .NET Standard 2.1
  • Blockchain ready
  • And much more.

Available on mobile

One of the historical barriers to using Silverlight was unavailability on iOS and Android.

This restriction was finally lifted by a collaboration with Apple teams who wanted to integrate the runtime as quickly as possible.

Google, seeing itself out of the game, followed suit and made Silverlight compatible with Android.

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Source: www.geeky-gadgets.com

Integration of augmented reality

Augmented reality (abbreviated as AR in English) is an extremely useful tool for solving everyday problems.

Microsoft couldn't afford to miss it and was eager to natively integrate tools enabling ordinary mortals to create modules AR ready.

The power of the C# language and the benefits of XAML can help you create applications that integrate augmented reality.

Let's see together how to create a simple page showing a scene showing the Minecraft environment.

Creating the MinecraftARPage.xaml class:


<Page ...>
    <ARScene x :Name= "myScene"/>
</Page>

MinecraftARPage.xaml.cs (Code behind)


public class MinecraftARPage : Page
{
     public MinecraftARPage()
     {  
       Loaded += Page_Loaded;
       UnLoaded += Page_UnLoaded;
     }

     private void MyWindow_Loaded(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
     {
        // Lancement de la scène
        myScene.Start();

        // Ajout d’un objet 3D à la scène
        myScene.AddMinecraftReality();        
        // Remove this obselete code ==&gt;
        // myScene.AddFishForAprilMonthOnly();
     }

     private void MyWindow_UnLoaded(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
     {
        myScene.Stop();
     }
}

And here, in a few lines of code we added a 3D virtual object superimposed on our real object.

Displaying our Minecraft scene in AR:

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Support for .NET Standard 2.1

For ease of use, Silverlight 6 supports .NET Standard 2.1.

Thanks to the integration of .NET Standard 2.1, you can use the latest modern .NET concepts such as Span<T>.

In fact, thousands of nuggets are compatible.

For more information please refer to: here.

Note: Thomas will finally be able to manage his queues more simply with Azure Event Grid directly from his Silverlight applications.

Blockchain ready

Blockchain is a transparent, secure information storage and transmission technology that operates without a control body.

The main advantage is that validity verification is not done by a central authority but by each user.

And what's better is that your Silvelight apps can integrate into blockchains. The more you need to buy expensive servers, the more each user of your apps will contribute to mining making your blockchain more secure.

Example of creating a basic blockchain:


Blockchain seattleBusBlock = new Blockchain();
seattleBusBlock.AddBlock(new Block(DateTime.Now,null,"{sender:Thibaut, cost:11, nbTickets : 4, paid:20}"));
// Il semble que Thibaut aime le bus...
seattleBusBlock.AddBlock(new Block(DateTime.Now,null,"{sender:Jérôme, cost:11, nbTickets : 4, paid:12}"));

Do we really have to bet on Silverlight?

Thanks to the Edge + Chromium partnership, Google thinks seriously let go HTML5 For the benefit of Silverlight.

It seems that JavaScript frameworks such as Angular, ReactJS If they're on the shelf, they can become obsolete very quickly.

Happy coding 🙂

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