Creating a localizable Silverlight 2.0 RTW Application

About

The sample below shows how you can bind language resources (resx) using only markup. The final version of Silverlight makes localization alot cleaner.

Requirements

Visual Studio professional or greater plus the Silverlight Tools for Visual Studio 2008 SP1 and the excellent Dmytro Kryvko’s Extended Strongly Typed Resource Generator 2.3 at http://dmytro.kryvko.googlepages.com/ installer is at http://dmytro.kryvko.googlepages.com/ResXFileCodeGeneratorEx23.zip

Instructions

1. Open Visual Studio
2. Click File \ New Project…
3. Select Visual C# \ Silverlight \ Silverlight Application
4. In the name field type SL2_RTM_Loc
5. Click ok and ok
6. In the Project Explorer
7. Right click on the SL2_RTM_Loc (c# Icon) Project
8. Click Add \ New Folder
9. Name it Resources
10. Right click on Resources folder and click add New Item…
11. Select Resources File
12. Name it Strings.resx and click ok
13. Close Strings.resx in VS
14. Select Strings.resx in VS and its file properties replace it Custom Tool field from ResXFileCodeGenerator to ResXFileCodeGeneratorEx
15. Right click on the strings.resx file and Select Run Custom Tool
16. Open strings.resx in VS
17. In the Name Field type tb1 and value “tb1 in english”
18. Repeat with Name Field type tb2 and value “tb2 in english”
19. Click Save, press F5 and add debugging to web.config
20. IE opens up with a blank page
21. Close IE
22. Open Page.xaml in xaml editor window
23. In the user control add a new xml namespace xmlns:Loc="clr-namespace:SL2_RTM_Loc.Resources"
24. Add a locstrings as a  resource to your page eg: <UserControl.Resources><Loc:Strings x:Name="LocStrings" /></UserControl.Resources>
25. Inside the grid add a Textblock and bind it to your resource Tb1 eg: <TextBlock Text="{Binding tb1, Source={StaticResource LocStrings}}" />
26. The String should appear in the Design view above
27. Wrap the textblock inside a vertical stackpanel  and add a second Textkblock

<StackPanel Orientation="Vertical">

<TextBlock Text="{Binding tb1, Source={StaticResource LocStrings}}" />

<TextBlock Text="{Binding tb2, Source={StaticResource LocStrings}}" />

</StackPanel>

28. In Project Explorer right click on Strings.resx and copy and paste it into the resources folder
29. Rename “Copy of Strings.resx” to “Strings.de.resx” (DE is the two letter language code for German)
30. Select Strings.de.resx in VS and its file properties remove it Custom Tool field from value ResXFileCodeGeneratorEx and change its Copy to Output Directory field to Copy if newer
31. Open Strings.de.resx Edit the value to “tb1 auf deutsch” and “tb2 auf deutsch”
32. Click Save, press F5
33. Repeat the last three steps to add fr
34. Notice the file %HOMEPATH%\Documents\Visual Studio 2008\Projects\SL2_RTM_Loc\SL2_RTM_Loc\bin\Debug\de\ appears but is not embedded in your xap yet
35. To add that culture to your xap you must open the %HOMEPATH%\Documents\Visual Studio 2008\Projects\SL2_RTM_Loc\SL2_RTM_Loc\ SL2_RTM_Loc.csproj in notepad  
36. Update SupportedCultures to <SupportedCultures>de,fr</SupportedCultures>
37. Save and close
38. VS 2008 will ask you to reload project, click reload
39. Next we need to update the SL browser object reference
40. Delete the SL2_RTM_LocTestPage.aspx and set SL2_RTM_LocTestPage.html as your start page inside SL2_RTM_Loc.Web project
41. In SL2_RTM_LocTestPage.html  Add the culture and uiculture params to your silverlight object

<param name="culture" value="de" />

<param name="uiculture" value="de" />

42. Click Save, press F5
43. IE should open up with the German strings

Code: http://cid-2b248d261d0e0035.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/Public/SL2%7C_RTM%7C_Loc.zip

Further Reading

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc189057(VS.95).aspx