The Moth

Following from Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3, in this last part of the exploration I'll focus on the UI layer and I'll have even more of a statistical hat on.

11. System.Windows.dll is yet another Silverlight assembly with no direct counterpart in the full framework, but with tons of stuff inside (as evidenced by its size on disc and by the 21 namespaces!) that makes it the 2nd largest assembly. You can think of it as the brick that gives Silverlight its WPF UI. Its namespaces come from various v2.0 and v3.0 desktop assemblies as listed below (and it is in my opinion a prime candidate for refactoring):

-System.Net namespace with WebClient plus 6 related classes comes from the desktop's System.dll (!)

- System.ComponentModel comes from System.dll (! again) and is basically the BackgroundWorker implementation.

- 5 of its namespaces (System.Windows.Controls.Primitives, System.Window.Data, System.Windows.Documents, System.Windows.Resources, System.Windows.Shapes) and the System.ComponentModel.DesignerProperties class map to the desktop's PresentationFramework.dll

- 3 of its namespaces (System.Collections.ObjectModel, System.Collections.Specialized, System.Threading) map to WindowsBase.dll.

- 2 of its namespaces (System.Windows.Ink, System.Windows.Media.Imaging) map to the desktop's PersentationCore.dll.

- System.Windows namespace has a total of 61 types, coming from homonymous namespaces in PresentationCore.dll (e.g. FontStyle, RoutedEventHandler) and PresentationFramework.dll (e.g. Application, FrameworkElement) and WindowsBase.dll (e.g. DependencyProperty, Point) and also introduces some new types (e.g. AssemblyPart, ErrorType).

- System.Windows.Markup namespace with 2 types from WindowsBase.dll, 2 from PresentationFramework.dll and 1 from PresentationCore.dll.

- System.Windows.Media namespace which maps to PresentationCore.dll except for Matrix class from WindowsBase.dll and 5 new Silverlight types (MediaElementState, TimelineMarkerCollection plus 2 relatives and VideoBrush).

- System.Windows.Input largely maps to PresentationCore.dll, except for 2 classes (Key and ModifierKeys) from WindowsBase.dll and 1 class (KeyboardNavigationMode) from PresentationFramework.dll. There is also one new class in there: StylusInfo.

- System.Windows.Controls namespace has 24 types that come from PresentationFramework.dll (same namespace name of course). It also has 2 types (MultiScaleImage, MultiScaleSubImage) that make up the DeepZoom feature. It also has 3 types (2 from System.Windows.Forms.dll plus 1 brand new) that make up the OpenFileDialog feature.

- System.IO.IsolatedStorage.ApplicationSettings class has no counterpart in the desktop world and was touched upon here (scroll to the bottom).

- System.Windows.Interop namespace with 3 classes (Content, Settings and SilverlightHost) that is all new in Silverlight framework (even though that namespace name exists in various other WPF assemblies).


12. and 13. System.Windows.Controls.dll and System.Windows.Controls.Extended.dll
The overwhelming majority of the Silverlight controls reside in the System.Windows.Controls.dll assembly. The Extended.dll adds the Calendar, DatePicker, Slider and WatermarkedTextBox.


14. System.Windows.Controls.Data.dll
This adds a control not available at present in WPF: the Silverlight DataGrid. For all things DataGrid-related visit Scott's blog.