How to develop Silverlight 4 using Visual Studio Express 2010

Background

Visual Studio Express 2010 is free IDE provided by Microsoft. I am going to develop a p2p instant messaging app based on Silverlight 4 and WCF.

Download and install Visual Studio Express 2010

To develop Silverlight 4 using Visual Studio Express 2010, we need to install Visual C# 2010 Express , Microsoft Web Platform Installer 2.0 and Visual Web Developer 2010 Express .

go to http://www.microsoft.com/express/downloads/ to download and install it one by one.

Visual Web Developer 2010 Express is a part of Microsoft Web Platform Installer 2.0 , After installing Visual C# 2010 Express , Microsoft Web Platform Installer 2.0, Microsoft Web Platform Installer 2.0 shall start up automatically.

Tick "Visual Web Developer 2010 Express" to install it. This option was gone in my PC since I had installed it.

It took me about half an hour to install all three software. And it needed to restart the computer three times to finish the installation.

Install WCF RIA & Silverlight 4

In Web Platform Installer 2.0, Click "Customize" link for Tools.

Tick "WCF RIA" and "Silverlight 4" components. And then accept the license agreement.

Unfortunately, it came up an error screen.

I have to install all this software manually.

Download and install Silverlight 4 for Developers

http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=146060

Download and install Silverlight 4 Tools for Visual Studio 2010

http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=177508

Intall RIAServiceToolkitMay2010 and Silverlight4Toolkit in Web Platform Installer temporarily folder.

Create Silverlight 4 & WCF RIA projects

Succeeded to install "WCF RIA" and "Silverlight 4" components, we can create Silverlight 4 & WCF RIA projects in Visual Web Developer 2010 Express

Silverlight 4 project

WCF RIA Service project