Silverlight Re-Use

In the course of working on Silverlight-driven applicatons, as well as WPF development, I have come to know other silverlight-eager developers and learners. And I am quite surprised at the number of people that do not know about the templates that comes from Silverlight. I like some of the ready-made templates from Silverlight,

 

If you enlarge the image, you can see that the silverlight team at microsoft has created 4 templates that will help people like me to get started with an application. Now, if you are from a designer background, I'm sure you'll be able to do a much better job than these templates. As for myself, I'm not exactly a graphic designer kind of person, but I appreciate the art of designing, and I strive to learn as much as I can about whatever design tools there are out there. Unfortunately, all of us only have 24 hours, so when it comes down to prioritizing, I prefer to re-use templates that have already been created for me.

In the current age of technology development, re-inventing the wheel is no longer appreciated. Nowadays, people are looking for more efficient, time effective solutions. Nobody wants to create something from scratch. The time and effort to do so just doesn't justify the means.

Here's a sample of the template when executed:

 

If you are like me, and being productive your on the top of your priorities, then you seriously need to learn how to use these templates. What I love to do, is to create a new silverlight application using VS, then switch it over to Blend 4, where I can easily manage the Resources using the Properties Panel. This is a much faster method I felt, to create your desired design and layout.

Hope you will enjoy developing silverlight applications the way I do! Have fun guys!