Flash in WPF / Silverlight?

Michael Swanson has released SWF2XAML, a free tool that allows you to export SWF files to XAML (you can say that this is a Flash to WPF / Silverlight format tool). All the details here . By the way, Michael Swanson is the author of the famous AI-> XAML converter .









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First, what is XAML?

With the advent of .Net 3.0, many new possibilities have opened up for programmers and designers. Of course, many of them could be implemented in Windows Forms, but WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) makes it easier. This is facilitated not only by the new controls, but also by the new XAML interface description language proposed by Microsoft.



XAML, as the name implies, is essentially simple XML that describes the contents of the windows. This format has become the standard and will be implemented by Microsoft wherever possible (“We bet on XML”). For example, the new file system (WinFS) will be based on the XML format.



What about XAML says Wikipedia :

XAML (eXtensible Application Markup Language) is the interface language of the Windows Vista platform. The Vista Application Model includes an Application object. Its set of properties, methods, and events allows you to combine web documents into a related application. The Application object controls the execution of the program and generates events for user code. Application documents are written in XAML. However, with the help of XAML, the user interface is described first of all. The application logic is still controlled by a procedural code (C #, VB, etc.). XAML can be used for browser-based applications as well as for local desktop applications.

XAML includes four main categories of elements: panels, controls, elements associated with a document, and graphic shapes. Declared 7 classes of panels that define the principles of displaying the elements nested in them. To set the position of elements relative to the borders of the parent panel, attributes are used in the manner of properties in object-oriented languages. This syntax doesn’t really fit in with the CSS recommendations, but will be familiar to programmers of desktop applications.

Applications advertised in XAML can include multiple pages. The PageViewer control allows you to paginate content and provide navigation through it. The ContextMenu element helps in creating the navigation menus of the application. The procedural language code can be placed directly in the XAML file or assigned when building the project.

This is very good news. We now have a free tool that allows us to export SWF to XAML or plain language to plain XML. Even better, it all smacks - Flash in WPF / Silverlight