Silverlight 5 RC (Release Candidate) has been already released. There are some new features already included in this build. Among them, one most important feature is PInvoke. PInvoke means Platform Invoke. By using this, you can directly talk to system resources without using COM APIs.

In this article, we will explore it more and show you how to open the "Run Dialog" directly from the Silverlight 5 application. Here also, we will use In-Browser application which you can easily port to Out-Of-Browser.

Expression Blend 5 Preview Ultimate is now available for Silverlight 5 Release Candidate. It supports only Silverlight 5 projects including Sketch Flow. You can install it side-by-side with Expression Blend 4. For more information, visit Microsoft Download Centre.

Direct link: Download Microsoft Expression Blend 5 Preview for Silverlight 5 RC

Friends, as I mentioned last 2-3 days, the day finally arrives when I am going to Kick-Off the Giveaway contest for you. Yes, you heard correct. Telerik is going to give you a FREE License of RadControls Library for Silverlight which you can use for both Silverlight and LightSwitch application development. The prize value of the License of this library is $799 and you can get this absolutely FREE. Just you have to follow some simple steps to Win this license.

The contest will stay for just 5 days. Don't wait. Time is running out. Read the complete post and attend the contest to win this $799 controls library. Who knows, you will be the Winner!!!

Yesterday in the blog post "Telerik RadChartControl for LightSwitch Application - Day 1 - Setup the Screen", we discussed about the prerequisite, setting up project, creation of Table and Screens for LightSwitch application. We created a simple screen of data grid from some data present in the table.

In this post, we will discuss on integration of Telerik Chart control in LightSwitch application. This will not only help you Telerik control integration but will help you to add your own UserControls into the screen. Don't forget to take part in the Giveaway, which Telerik is doing for my blog readers.

If you are working on LightSwitch application, you may probably need to use UserControl or you may need to use Telerik controls or any other 3rd party controls. So, in such case, how will you add UserControls in LightSwitch application?

In this article series, I will show you how to add a UserControl in LightSwitch app using the Telerik RadChartControl. This will give you basic understandings of the use of RadChartControl.

At the end of the series, there will be a Giveaway of Telerik RadControls for Silverlight, which you can use for both Silverlight and LightSwitch application development.

Last week, Microsoft released Silverlight 5 Release Candidate (RC). If you didn't yet download the bits and try out the new features, read the post "Silverlight 5 RC is now Available". During the week, we submitted blog posts from various sources to Silverlight-Zone.com on Silverlight, Windows Phone 7, LightSwitch, XNA and other similar categories.

In this blog post, find the top viewed 5 posts @SilverlightZone. "The WP7 Motion API" was the popular post. Read more to find out the complete list, as well as the Archive links of Daily News Headline.

As of now, you might know that, Silverlight 5 RC (Release Candidate) has been released by Microsoft on 1st September 2011. If you are not aware of that, or if you didn't yet download the latest bits of Silverlight 5, visit "Silverlight 5 Release Candidate is now Available - Download Silverlight 5 RC" to know about this release as well as download the installer to start developing your applications.

So, what's new in this release of Silverlight 5? There are many but in this post, we will discuss about some changes in the Application settings for Elevated Trust for Out-of-Browser and In-Browser applications. What's that? Read more to know about this.

It's the early morning, when I received a mail from Telerik MVP Lead (Community Relations Manager) Holly Bertoncini stating that, I have been awarded as Telerik MVP for the Q2 of 2011. This is because of my contribution towards the Telerik (Silverlight) community.

Feeling good to add an additional MVP tag to my profile. Thanks to Telerik team for considering my work to reward me as an MVP. Also thanks to all my readers & followers, who supported me all the times.

Silverlight 5 Release Candidate is now available from Microsoft. They just released the RC build to public. You will be able to download it freely from Microsoft Download Center.

In this post, I am going to share the link of the Silverlight 5 RC Tools for Visual Studio 2010. Download it and start building your application. Make sure that, it's not in "Go-Live" license, so you can't deploy the Silverlight applications build with this release to production. This build is just for the developers to give the developers a chance to test their applications before they release the final version.

The SQL developer needs to be able to create processes for the working database by using one of the many programming objects (like functions, stored procedures, constrains, or triggers). By creating objects that talk with SQL you simply the way other programs (like applications or web pages) can interconnect. These eternal programs only need to call on the names of your programming objects by name rather than needing to submit large pieces of advance code.

With SQL Programming Development (Volume 4 of 5) in the SQL Server Joes 2 Pros development series, you learn how programming objects work in SQL Server. This book has been authored by Rick A. Morelan, Pinal Dave and Jessica Brown. If you are a SQL Developer, you may like the series of the book.

Today Microsoft showcased Ribbon UI support in Windows Explorer of Windows 8. This features a nice look and feel to the User Interface by providing all the recommended tasks in one place using the Ribbon bar. We are all familiar with Ribbon bar which is currently present in Microsoft Office but this is the first time when they integrated it to the Windows OS by default.

I am really very excited to see this in Windows 8 and thought to share it with you. Hope you will also like it. Read the post to know more about it and also find the useful links and video at the end of the post.

Here comes the weekly news digest of Silverlight-Zone.com. During last week (i.e. from 21st August 2011 to 27th August 2011) we have submitted 78 new links in Silverlight-Zone on various topics like Silverlight, Windows Phone 7, LightSwitch, XAML, MVVM, XNA and more.

Most popular post was "Fundamental MVVM" from John Papa. In this post, I am going to share the top 5 visited posts @SilverlightZone during last week. Also, I am going to share the daily news digest links in case you missed to find some of them.

Few days ago, I published a XAML Tips "How to Convert a Rectangle to a Path Control using Expression Blend?". Today in this post, we will discuss on another tips similar to that post. In this post, we will discuss on the steps to crop an element to give a desired output.

This post will help a beginner who just started designing XAML using Expression Blend. Hope, this small tip will help you to understand it in better way. Read to know more on this topic.

Windows Phone 7.1 SDK Release Candidate (RC) is now available for download. Microsoft released this version with “Go Live” license, that means, you can now build production applications and submit them to the Marketplace. This build also empowers the developer to build applications and games both for WP7.0 and WP7.1 devices.

In this post, find the link to the web installer and standalone/offline installer. Download, install and start building your games or applications.

This will be a short tip of the day where I will show you the way to convert a Rectangle or a Ellipse control to a Path control. If you are not familiar with Expression Blend and currently working with it to design your UI, this tip will definitely help you in various scenarios.

Let’s start with a small demonstration using Rectangle control. You can do the same for Ellipse too. Read to know more.

Proud to announce that, I have been selected as the Winner of Article writing competition at "The Code Project" for the month of July 2011. This is the first competition that I have won from Code project.

Last month I wrote an article on Silverlight which demonstrated the steps require to do the communication between two local Silverlight applications. This article was well appreciated by the readers and my sincere thanks to all community fellows to support me by providing their vote and feedback. Read to find more about the article.

During last week (i.e. from 14th August 2011 to 20th August 2011) we submitted 85 posts at Silverlight-Zone.com. Topics were on Silverlight, Windows Phone 7, LightSwitch and Xbox. Some posts on WPF also showcased there.

In this post find the most visited 5 posts. As usual, I am sharing the "Daily News Digest" pages of last week too, in case you want to find out the posts submitted during the week.

Microsoft released the new stable version of "Silverlight for Windows Phone Toolkit (SDK 7.1)" at Codeplex. This is the first stable build after the February 2011 release. This release features several new controls and fixes to the existing controls.

In this post find the new controls that has been added to this release. Also find the setup link and urls to the release notes.

Hope you already read my article series "Collection of Windows Phone 7 (Mango) Tutorials". During the tutorial series, we used the common styles "PhoneTextNormalStyle" and "PhoneTextTitle1Style" in the TextBlocks added to the TitlePanel. So what are those? These are all common styles defined by the style library of WP7 SDK.

In this post, we will learn about various font sizes defined in the default style library of Windows Phone 7. So, you don't have to define them again and can reuse those styles which will be standard sizes all over any Phone 7 Applications. Let's discuss them here. Read to know more about it.

Sometime we need to bind the same data in different properties of the same control. For example, in some cases we need to show text in a TextBlock and also want to show the same text as a Tooltip to that TextBlock control.

How to do it? It's very easy to bind the same value twice in the control. But is there any other way to implement the same? Let us discuss this today in this blog post. If you are not aware of it till date, you will definitely like.

Today in this article we will discuss how to fetch feed from Picasa and display images from that RSS feed to your Windows Phone 7. This will not only clear the image feed mechanism in WP7, but will also help you to understand how to read RSS feed in Windows Phone 7 or in a Silverlight application.

After reading this article, you will be able to fetch any feed and display specific content in your application. Hope, this will help you. Don't forget to share it to your followers and if you have any query, drop a line below.

Here comes the weekly news digest of Silverlight-Zone.com. During last week (i.e. from 7th August 2011 to 13th August) we have submitted 83 news links in Silverlight-Zone on various topics like Silverlight, Windows Phone 7, LightSwitch, XAML, MVVM and more.

In this post, I am going to share the top 5 visited posts @SilverlightZone during last week. Also, I am going to share the daily news digest links in case you missed to find some of them.

Sometime we need to detect the browser information of the user's computer where our Silverlight application is running. We can do this using the JavaScript but sometime it is useful to detect it from our Silverlight application. So, how to do it? Let us discuss this with a small simple example.

Read this post to know how to detect the browser information using the HtmlPage.BrowserInformation property.

"Why my Visual Studio debugger is not working for my Silverlight application?" - it's not a new question. People ask this several time in different forums. If you search on net, you may probably find the solution. But, in this post I am just sharing the solution once again for my blog readers and anyone on the net who may face similar issue in future.

In this post, I will share you 4 small tips. Just follow the steps from top to bottom and let me know which one resolved your problem. This tip might not be a new thing for you but don't forget to share to others. This could be useful for them.