Silverlight first start

Back on the horse... The last couple of years I've been just too busy to keep up with everything coming from the Microsoft world. When I come across people using C# syntax I didn't even knew existed, I know it is time to get myself together and get back up to speed with things. So, it remains to see if a great promise to the world will help me hold me in the saddle for some time. I can't remember for sure when I first heard about Silverlight, but it's not too long ago. MS released a full version 1 and actually got to the 2nd Beta of v2 before I woke up a week ago. Luckily my work in Qatar allowed me to wait a whole week for a package, without doing anything by sticking around. Since I'm not into day-trading, I picked Siverlight to be a great topic to focus my attention on. This will be no in-depth story of a single topic here this time. Still I hope I can encourage everyone interested to get things installed and start playing around. How to get started? Given that you already got VS 2008 installed, download and install the SilverLight 2 Tools for Visual Studio. Even if not needed, I highly recommend also installing Expression Blend. You find both downloads on http://silverlight.net/GetStarted/ (The downloads are 84 and 32 MB, so it shouldn't be too hard on most systems) When installed, you can teorethically start developing. Myself, I was early stuck in the new XAML syntax and understood I had to get some guidance. Searching the net for a minute, I wasn't too surprised to see Scott Guthrie's name appear. His blog is the definite starting point, with a nice 8-piece tutorial to work your way through the first day or so in the new environment. If you're spending a bit time on this, you will quickly grow out of the getting started stuff. Then it is nice to see that mr. Guthrie also maintains a nice list of Silverlight resources, which will also introduce you to the more real stuff. Other recommended reading is Delay's Blog. He often shows examples going beyond my imagination, but it really helps me thinking in new ways. Both thumbs up! As I progress beyond yelling Hello World, I hope to post some useful articles here. Until then...