As the desire to deliver rich web content and functionality has increased over the last decade, Rich Internet Application (RIA) technologies have become increasingly powerful. Unfortunately, many of these technologies have been out of reach for many client application developers because of the non-trivial learning curve involved. In addition, with the number of RIA technologies available, where do you even begin? In many cases, there was not a “one size fits all” solution, so RIA development would involve a mix of HTML, JavaScript, Adobe Flash, and perhaps a little AJAX thrown in (just to name a few possibilities).

Luckily, Microsoft has entered the world of RIA frameworks, and with the introduction of Microsoft Silverlight 2, offers a platform, which leverages existing .NET developers’ talents. With version 3.0 in the works, providing enhanced graphics support, data binding, and perhaps best of all, out-of-browser support, the Silverlight platform is certainly worth a look for new, and even existing, RIA development.

Silverlight includes many of the same base services and types included in the .NET Framework. However, because it is a runtime built specifically for the web, where developers expect a robust platform in a small package, much of the functionality included in its desktop cousin is absent. For example, the image type in Silverlight, System.Windows.Media.Imaging.BitmapImage, only supports JPEG and PNG image file types, and does not include support for grayscale. This is where third-party tools vendors become part of the Silverlight ecosystem, providing extensions to the base platform as the market demands. For the imaging domain, Accusoft Pegasus has continued its reputation as the imaging tools leader, by providing one of the first imaging toolkits for Silverlight developers – ImageGear for Silverlight.

This article will provide a quick tour of the ImageGear for Silverlight toolkit while developing a multi-page image viewer, running completely on the client, via managed code.

Download pdf Building a Multi-Page Image Viewer with ImageGear for Silverlight