05 February 2009

I have run across a couple really interesting items in the Silverlight area recently, and I’d like to call some attention to both of them.

First is a tool that compresses xap files called XapOptimizer. Right now you can try it online – upload your xap, then download a compressed result. I’ve done this with a couple of my xap files and the size difference is quite remarkable. I assume it will be a product you can work into your build script at some point.

Second is something totally different: a browsable pattern library of UI patterns. This is really interesting, and potentially very useful, because it pulls together real-world examples showing various implementations of the patterns, as well as providing some good motivation and explanation about each. What’s even better, is that this is written in Silverlight. But the really impressive part of this is the effort that must have gone into collecting and organizing all the data for the patterns.