Microsoft Silverlight 5: Building Rich Enterprise Dashboards -- Table of Contents -- Microsoft Silverlight 5: Building Rich Enterprise Dashboards -- Credits -- About the Authors -- About the Reviewers -- www.PacktPub.com -- Support files, eBooks, discount offers and more -- Why Subscribe? -- Free Access for Packt account holders -- Instant Updates on New Packt Books -- Preface -- What this book covers -- What you need for this book -- Who this book is for -- Conventions -- Reader feedback -- Customer support -- Downloading the example code -- Errata -- Piracy -- Questions -- 1. The Silverlight Technology -- What benefit does Silverlight bring to the table? -- XAML as a declarative programming model -- Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM) -- View First versus ViewModel First -- Dependency Injection (DI) -- Silverlight as a Web technology -- Asynchronous programming in Silverlight -- Silverlight features -- Client-side application development -- Reduced server load -- Client-side state -- Cross-browser development simplified -- Putting the pieces together -- Summary -- 2. Overview of Dashboards and Silverlight -- What are dashboards -- Purpose of dashboards -- Problems dashboards solve -- Current state of building dashboards -- When good just isn't good enough -- Why should we use Silverlight? -- Summary -- 3. Silverlight Design and Development Tools -- Blend strengths and weaknesses -- Visual Studio strengths and weaknesses -- Visual States -- Storyboards -- Sample Data -- Templates -- Visual Studio -- Debugging -- Developing for Silverlight -- Project Management -- Summary -- 4. Building a Basic Dashboard -- Creating a Silverlight Dashboard Application -- What is the MVVM pattern -- Building the Dashboard -- Setting up the Data Source -- Defining the View-Model and Model classes -- Laying out XAML and Data Binding -- Customizing the UI -- Summary.

5. Dashboard Types and User Needs -- Different dashboards for different needs -- Strategic -- Analytical -- Operational -- The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly-typical dashboard charts and graphs -- Bar chart -- Pros -- Cons -- Stacked bar chart -- Pros -- Cons -- Line graph -- Pros -- Cons -- Scatterplot -- Pros -- Cons -- Bullet graph -- Pros -- Cons -- Sparkline -- Pros -- Cons -- Small multiples -- Pros -- Cons -- Pie chart -- Pros -- Cons -- Focusing on needs, not technology -- Representing and communicating user experience -- User-centered design -- User research -- Personas -- Scenarios -- Requirements -- Storyboards -- Sketches -- Wireframes -- Prototypes -- High-fidelity mockups -- Scenario-based requirements and design -- Example scenarios for dashboard design -- Summary -- 6. Designing for Insight -- Interaction aesthetics versus visual aesthetics -- Pre-attentive processing -- Applying pre-attentive processing to dashboard design -- Warnings about using pre-attentive attributes -- Mixing too many attributes -- Visual distractors -- Scenario-based design of our dashboard -- Our initial overall dashboard wireframe -- Requirement 1 -- Requirement 2 -- Requirement 3 -- Requirement 4 -- Requirement 5 -- Requirement 6 -- Summary -- 7. Designing your Dashboard -- Knowing your tools -- Blend basics -- Assets -- Data -- Design View (Artboard) -- Objects and Timeline -- Parts -- Projects -- Properties -- Resources -- Results -- States -- Styling in Silverlight -- Referencing resources -- Implementing resources -- Creating a Button -- Exploring a Button's Control Template -- Creating a Custom Button Control Template -- Adding Visual States (Visual State Manager) -- MouseOver State -- Adding transistions to the MouseOver State -- Pressed State -- Converting Brushes to Resources -- Creating Resource Dictionaries.

Getting started with styling our Dashboard -- Creating a custom User Control in Blend -- Styling the Grid and Chart -- Summary -- 8. Building an End-to-End Solution -- Dashboard prerequisites -- Dashboard requirements -- Designing the solution -- Describing an N-Tier application design -- Sample project structure -- Setting up the Data Source -- Reviewing the database schema -- Stored procedures -- spTopUsInternetProducts -- spTopUsInternetCustomers -- spSalesByRegion -- spFinanceData -- Building the server components -- Domain Model (Shared Between Client and Server) -- Data Access Layer -- Building the WCF service -- Defining the presentation layer -- View and controls -- View Model -- Service Layer -- Summary -- 9. Data Access Strategies -- Data access overview -- Core networking classes -- Working with WebClient -- Using Fiddler -- Understanding network security -- Building services with Windows Communication Foundation -- Working with WCF -- The data access layer -- Building a SOAP service -- Building a REST service -- Exploring OData data services -- Building an OData service -- Consuming an external service -- Summary -- 10. Building Dashboards in SharePoint and Silverlight -- Overview of SharePoint -- Setting up SharePoint -- Building a Silverlight web part -- Using the Client Object Model -- Building a SharePoint Silverlight dashboard -- Setting up our data source -- Building our dashboard -- SharePoint Data Access Strategies -- Summary -- Index.