I just got back from Ghent, where I attended the seminar about Silverlight and XNA.

And I was astonished about the power of Silverlight.

The main advantage is: XAML. The designer uses MS Blend for the creation of the pages/windows/controls, and the developer can just use that code, no conversion needed (it just works). He can import the project in Visual Studio 2008 (same structure), attach some eventhandlers, bla bla.

Silverlight has a very rich framework, of course not the whole .NET framework. It’s a subset, containing the most parts that you need for web development, for example there is no need for File Access.

A very interesting feature is Application Storage. A local cache for example when you want to save some settings. It’s quite the same as cookies, but a lot more powerfull.

This session was given by Gill Cleeren.

About the XNA part:
Was a bit boring in the beginning, but as we advanced it got more interesting. Afterwards Peter and I spoke to the speaker, and he gave us some demos about other stuff he made (which was actually the most interesting part about this session).

We learned how a model got constructed, with Meshes and MeshParts, around bones (parents), and collision detection, which was kind of cool.

To use a sphere to check if they collide, to use per pixel detection, or triangle detection: we discussed all the advantages and disadvantages.

I now have a (supercool) mug with the beautiful Silverlight logo

Learned a lot today, really a lot.

I would like to thank my friend Peter for joining me in this trip, it was great mate!