Creating Widgets for Silverlight

Apurva, Web Developer Evangelist of Microsoft Singapore tells us of a sample "widget" application showcasing how a concept of a widget can be taken to allow end-users to get upto speed on creating/using reusable elements and hence cutting down development time.

Widget is a whole unit that contains the user interface and the business logic that makes the widget work. The developer creates the widget in a way that will allow his/her end-user to simply set bunch of properties and get the widget to do what it is supposed to do. Software developers could also look at creating and selling such widgets allowing them additional revenue stream. The idea is similar to creating custom controls but is probably a newer way to look at how resuable components could be created.

You can download the proof-of-concept sample code and make changes to it/enhance it as you see fit. Even better still would be to create you own widgets and share them with the Silverlight community.

Some other ideas for widgets (e-Learning) like: Drag-Drop, Multiple Answers, Crossword puzzles, …..