Today, we are excited to announce that the popular Silverlight Contrib and Silverlight Extensions projects will be merging into a single project!  We think this move will greatly benefit the Silverlight developer community.  Combining the two projects will provide a centralized location for developers looking to contribute controls to the community as well as those seeking to find controls for use in their own applications.  This consolidation will help to reduce overlapping efforts in addition to promoting a more rapid release cadence.

During the consolidation phase, we still encourage feedback and issue reports on both projects.  We will merge all of the project information from both projects once the name has been finalized and a centralized site has been developed.

So which name will we keep?  That is your decision!  From your votes, we will keep the more popular name.  Please make sure you voice your opinion by voting.  Votes from the community will be accepted until March 29^th, 2009 at 6:00 PM EDT.

As new information is available we will post updates on both the Silverlight Contrib blog and the Silverlight Extensions blog.  Stay tuned!

Silverlight Contrib 2009.1.0 has been released!  In this release we have some much-needed improvements in the CoolMenu control.  The CoolMenu control now inherits from ItemsControl and is much more flexible in the way of databinding scenarios and custom data templates.  Below, you will find a complete listing of all changes in this release.  For a complete listing of features, be sure to check out the project site: http://www.codeplex.com/silverlightcontrib

A special thanks goes out to Robby Ingebretson for contributing some really cool Visual Studio Snippets and Tim Greenfield for the new GroupBox control.

As always, we take your feedback seriously so we can make the product better!  Also, if you think you could help make Silverlight Contrib better and are serious about helping, we would love to hear from you!  We need all the help we can get!  Thanks!

Silverlight Contrib 2009.1.0 Download

Changes since the last release:

New Features

• New Type Converters
  
  • Char Type Converter
     
• Group Box Control
  
  • Added a new Group Box control which allows you to group content under a common header.
     
• CoolMenu Control (Updated)
  
  • CoolMenu now inherits from ItemsControl
  • Some extensibility is now possible by implementing ICoolMenuBehavior or overriding DefaultCoolMenuBehavior.
     
• Color Picker Control
  
  • Added SelectedColorChanging event. This event will fire while the user is dragging the mouse over the color picker control. The SelectedColorChanged event will continue to fire after the left-mouse button click is completed.
     
• ReSharper Live Templates
  
  • SLDependProp - Generates a Dependency Property without a change callback
  • SLDependPropChanged - Generates a Dependency Property with a change callback
  • SLDependPropAttached - Generates an Attached Dependency Property
  • SLInlineSBCompletedHandler - Generates an inline Storyboard Completed handler
  • SLRoutedEvent - Generates a RoutedEvent
     
• ReSharper File Templates
  • ClientAccessPolicy.xml File Template
  • CrossDomain.xml File Template
  • Silverlight Value Converter Template
  • Silverlight Panel
     
• Visual Studio Code Snippets
  • sldp - Generates a Dependency Property without a change callback
  • sldpc - Generates a Dependency Property with a change callback
  • sldpa - Generates an Attached Dependency Property
  • slevent - Generates a RoutedEvent
  • slsbc - Generates an inline Storyboard Completed handler
  • slpanel - Generates a Panel
  • slrss - A super basic collection class that loads an RSS feed
  • slvc - Silverlight Value Converter Template

Breaking Changes

• ColorSelected event on ColorPicker control has been renamed to SelectedColorChanged
• ColorSelectedEventArgs class renamed to SelectedColorEventArgs
• CoolMenu now inherits from ItemsControl instead of Control. This allows for better syntax for adding items and enables data template and data binding support.

Silverlight Contrib Alpha 3 has been released!  This release builds upon the Alpha 2 release with minor enhancements in many areas.  As always, we are requesting your feedback so we can make the product better!  Also, if you think you could help make Silverlight Contrib better and are serious about helping, we would love to hear from you!  We need all the help we can get!  Thanks!

Silverlight Contrib 2008.0.0 - Alpha 3 Download

Changes since the last release:

• Added API Documentation (CHM)
• Added Dynamic Imaging Support
  • Editable Image
  • BmpDecoder
  • PngEncoder
• Added new IValueConverters
  • HtmlDecodeConverter
  • StringFormatConverter
• Animation Extension Methods
  • Animate
  • AnimateDouble
  • FindStoryboard
• Color Picker Control is now resizable.
• Gauge Control supports optional pop-up progress indicator.
• Added Read-Only property for Star Selector control.
• Added ReSharper Templates
  • Dependency Property Generator
  • VSM Block Generator
  • Silverlight Control Template
  • Generic.xaml template.

I'm happy to announce the Alpha 2 release of Silverlight Contrib!  If you have been following the project on CodePlex, you know that a lot has changed in the past few weeks.  The team has grown to 6 members and we have added quite a few new features (including Silverlight 2 RTW Compatibility).  Additionally, we have created a web site (SilverlightContrib.org) which contains live demonstrations of many features in Silverlight Contrib as well as an RSS feed for keeping up with announcements. 

We will continue to make enhancements and improvements to the project and once the code base meets our quality expectations, we will publish a full release (sans the alpha/beta tags).  As always, we are requesting your feedback so we can make the product better!

Controls

• Color Picker
• Gauge Control
• Star Selector
• Enhanced Metafile (EMF)
• Cool Menu

Library

• Zip Compression
• Byte Utilities
• String Utilities
• Simple Text Parser
• Animation Tweening
• Wheel Mouse Listener
• Clipboard Helper - (Internet Explorer Only)
• Data Context Extension Method Wrapper