Silverlight TextBlock Control

The TextBlock control in Silverlight is used in the same manner as an ASP Label control. However, from my experience you have a lot more control with a TextBlock control.

There is some background you should know about Silverlight controls. Silverlight uses a mark up language known as XAML. The Silverlight Controls can have attributes embedded in a tag or they can be in the sub elements of a control. For example when you want to change the Text of a TextBlock control you have multiple options to do this. Here are a couple of examples.

or...

Both of these code blocks will do the exact same thing. Explore through the attributes to see what you can get out of them. You can create a bit more robust text with some effort.

You can put your own creative spin on Text in a text block without having to go in to the code behind to do something really crazy like this...

So you can see that there is some great power behind the embedded tags on the XAML side. Check out all the different options that you have available to build some very robust Labels.

Interested Topics

Languages

• C#
• Java
• Groovy
• Grails
• XBasic
  
• XAML
• T-SQL (<-- does this count?)

Technologies

• ASP.NET
• Silverlight
• SharePoint
• AlphaFive
• WPF

IDEs

• Visual Studio 2005/2008/2010
• AlphaFive Software
• Eclipse
• NetBeans

Experience

• Full Life Cycle development
• Prototyping
• Documentation
• Web Development

I have a degree in Computer Science, and I didn't start a career in software engineering until after my time in the military. I have only been at this for less than a year so far.

Is there something about the Software Engineering community that I missing? I get the feeling that people stick to one know how and let that be their weapon of choice. Is this true? My perspective about life is to learn as much as possible. Is that a waste of time. I am taking the necessary steps to learn new languages, technologies, etc. to be more versatile. However, the people that work around me are focused on one area (i.e., Desktop Applications with C# and SQL or Web Development with Groovy & Grails). Am I just missing something here?

I am not talking about just scraping the top of these techniques and procedures. I dive into the deep end. Whether that is reading a book from cover to cover, or searching the internet for blogs, forums, nick nacks, etc. to get the ins and outs. I have recreated a web application in two different ways to "prototype" it.

I would like to know if I am headed down the wrong path with being so versatile. Someone let me know if I need to be focusing in on something.