Book excerpt: This valuable reference—in full color—explains the major new release of Silverlight 3 which is dramatically improved over previous versions and makes the development of powerful Rich Interactive Applications (RIAs) achievable for everyone. Packed with examples and written by a highly-seasoned team of developers and designers, this book guides you through the languages, tools, and techniques that are used to build applications on the Silverlight 3 platform (Build 40522). Each chapter provides a mini-tutorial on the respective topic, and the examples serve to both educate and inspire you. The information in this book is structured to help prepare you for the real-world challenges you may face when building applications on the Silverlight platform. By the end of the book, you’ll have gained a thorough understanding of how Silverlight applications are architected, developed, and designed. This book covers: · XAML basics · Silverlight 3 Tools for Visual Studio 2008, Expression Blend 3 and Silverlight Runtime and SDK Transforming text with render transforms · Using graphics, visuals and adding media for a richer user experience · Building application, making it come alive and responding to user activity · Setting up a control project and using a custom control in an application