Microsoft Dynamics CRM with Silverlight

The current buzz around technology today is Microsoft Silverlight. See my previous article on Moonlight is Linux's Microsoft Silverlight who are unfamiliar with Silverlight. Silverlight has the power of programming animations. Now it goes beyond the simple animations. It has provided to work and integrate with any application and now it has grouped up with Microsoft Dynamics CRM. The Microsoft Dynamics CRM Team has developed this application and the demo was presented at TechEd 2007.

What is Microsoft Dynamics CRM?

Microsoft Dynamics CRM is a customer relationship management (CRM) solution developed by Microsoft. It is a solution that provides the tools and capabilities needed to create and easily maintain a clear picture of customers, from first contact through to purchase and post-sales. It is a part of the Microsoft Dynamics family of business tools. It offers

• Tight integration with Microsoft Office and Outlook
• Quick and easy access to Data
• Customized workspaces
• Powerful reporting and analysis tools
• Mobile support

You can know further information at Microsoft Dynamics CRM site.

More about the Demo

The above picture shows the demo application. The authors details and his/her related books, pictures and other information are shown in nice animation. Dragging and dropping the pictures gives you detailed information which makes the application more lively. This information is brought from CRM records. This site has the information on the components used in the demo. The source code is also distributed and can be downloaded. Also has a readme file which describes the installation process and steps to run the demo. Download the Source code.

Moonlight is Linux's Microsoft Silverlight

We know that the Microsoft Silverlight is now the hottest technology in the current market. It is getting more popular nowadays. Currently, Silverlight supports only Microsoft Vista and Windows XP SP2. In order to cater the silverlight features to the common open source user, the open source crowd has plans to come up with what is called "Moonlight". Mono has started building up the Silverlight's version for Linux and open source systems, i.e., Moonlight.

What is Mono?

Mono provides the necessary software to develop and run .NET client and server applications on Linux, Solaris, Mac OS X, Windows and Unix. The Mono Open source project is sponsored by Novell. Mono is currently being used by a number of commercial software vendors and corporate enterprises to provide a rich environment for developing cross-platform applications. OTEE Implements Award-Winning 3D Game Development System Using Mono.

Microsoft Silverlight

Microsoft describes Silverlight as “a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of .NET based media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web. Silverlight offers a flexible programming model that supports AJAX, VB, C#, Python, and Ruby, and integrates with existing Web applications.”

Moonlight

It's simply a Mono based implementation of Silverlight, project temporarily named as Monolight. Moonlight is written with a combination of C++ and C# code. Moonlight uses version 1.1 of Silverlight, a browser plug-in for displaying interactive Web applications, which is due in the fall. Once completed, Moonlight will allow Linux users to see Silverlight content on the Web, such as videos, and run rich Internet applications.

Moonlight Screenshots

Some of the examples of Moonlight can be seen on this site. Some progress has been done on Moonlight and here are some of the screenshots of some of the examples made using Moonlight. Currently, Moonlight is in alpha. To get Moonlight for Linux, access Mono Moonlight site and it has a step by step process to get Moonlight.

Source Via Webware