Silverlight Example – Franklin University

When I transferred from Sinclair Community College to Franklin University, I was told that I needed to take a basic of Flash class to start my Interactive Media Design degree. I had already been active in Flash, Silverlight, and Flex development for some time, and thought that there had to be a way to avoid such nonsense.

Interactive Media Design in Silverlight

AlexSablan.info/imdPortfolio - A submission, by Alex Sablan, to Franklin University for interactive media chair
A Silverlight sample

I called my adviser and he informed me that if I wanted to by-pass having to take it I should talk with the chair.  The chair informed me that if I could create something that could show that I understood the basics of creating web/software interactions I could get transfer credit for the class.   So I went to work on this, you can click the image above to go to the Silverlight portfolio on alexsablan.info.

Over a weekend in July of 2011, I started brainstorming what I could make that could show a general knowledge of HCI.  I decided I should show some “newer” technologies, when I say newer I should clarify that I mean more forward thinking than using xhtml/javascript.  I figured I would have an interactive navigation linked to different examples of how Silverlight could be used for web authoring.

I decided to use an accordion for the navigation, with links in the accordion to different views in the main content view.  In order to show that I understood how to use some of the tools, I made a few crude “interactivties” using Silverlight.

  • On the home page:
    • A user could click on the screen and a random picture would begin to bounce across the screen until it lost energy.
  • In the portfolio section:
    • For Web Design, I created a basic click and expand gallery of several of my web sites.
    • For Interactive Design, I created a hangman game.
    • For Photography, I created a thumbnail/master gallery.
  • In the About section:
    • For the bio, I created a simple biography page.
    • For the contact, I created a form that would send a “get” post to my contact form at my info page.
Over the course of the weekend, I threw all of this together.  Planning, development, testing, and deploying to my website took about twelve hours total, with much of that being in the planning phase.  Most of my decisions ended up being based on ease of development in Silverlight with the IDE’s in Expression and Microsoft Visual Studio 2010.I am considering going back and making a new portfolio in HTML5/Jquery just for the sheer “fun” of it.  But with work and school, I do not know when I will have the time.If you have any questions feel free to ask in the comment section.