Bing Maps Silverlight Control .. Wait for Map Control is over !

Hello everyone, hope you enjoying Silverlight and Expression Studio all the time. Well, For a long from Silverlight 2 onwards,we all are waiting for Map Control in Silverlight, Till the time we had DeepEarth Project and various other third party stuff, But now I am happy to share that we now have our own Map Control for our applications, Its free and very much simple to use. Just to give all control in your hand to allow you to explore, I am giving all information in very short manner..A quick review you can say.

Yes ! Bing Maps Silverlight Control is now available. So what you need?

1. Silverlight 3 Setup + Visual Studio and Expression Blend (Expression is optional) (Sorry to say..But with Silverlight 2 it might not work..document says so)

2. Bing Maps Silverlight Control : You can download it from here :

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=beb29d27-6f0c-494f-b028-1e0e3187e830

3. You need to have account with : (Live ID is must)

https://www.bingmapsportal.com/

Once you install Bing Maps Silverlight Control, It will show you CHM file (If you really read that CHM carefully, you don’t need to read rest of my post,but please don’t do so :) ). All information is there in place with all necessary code snippets.

Now your job is to take normal Silverlight Application Project Template. Add Reference to your Silverlight Project to following dlls :

1. Microsoft.Maps.MapControl.Common.dll

2. Microsoft.Maps.MapControl.dll

You will find them usually under Program Files -> Bing Maps Silverlight Control -> V1-> Libraries

Then you need to set reference like this in your XAML file :

xmlns:BingMap="clr-namespace:Microsoft.Maps.MapControl;assembly=Microsoft.Maps.MapControl"

Then you need to write following XAML :

<BingMap:Map CredentialsProvider="Your Key Here"/>

Wait !..One step is mandetory before this, First you need to create Account with https://www.bingmapsportal.com/

You will get following UI once you perform login :

Well, you can see 3 options there :

1. Create an account : You need to enroll your self (Typical “I Agree all the terms” kind of stuff :D )

2. Create or View Keys : This is something similar to Silverlight Live Streaming account procedure, you need to give some name to your application and URL where you want this etc. For testing purpose you can give any URL (Specific URL is recommended though)

3. Update or View Account Details : Typical Account information.

Below these three you can find links to SDK and Blogs and forums which talk about Bing Map Control. (Ajax Control is also there beside Silverlight, My ASP.NET friends should give try for that too)

Then now come back to Visual Studio, Inside your app now, Place that key to “CredentialsProvider” and you done. Now you will see the Control on your designer like this :

This even opens in Blend, If at all you want to place some design around it :

Control as such will not expose any properties which you can set-reset in Property windows, you need to play with XAML and C# Code.Now after all this just play with it by pressing F5 and you can see the output like this : (For this simple Hello World kind of example, there is no C# code, but once you start digging inside this control and Maps, you need to play with C#)

Not satisfied?? Want to have more stuff?..Want to handle its events? Want to place Videos,Images on it??..well you can do it easily by just few line of code !..No I am not taking that small pain..you can simply refer CHM along with it, For those CHM word does not make sense, it looks like this :

So, Now let it be your ASP.NET or HTML Page, Mapping with Bing Map Control will add value to your application and more important is that, Its Bing and its free..Bing Bing Bingo !! :)

Hope you like this post, I kept this small since this is very exciting and I don’t want to kill your excitement, Still if you feel I should drop some code snippets here, feel free to talk with me, Will then go for some more apps or another in depth post,Keep visiting here since very soon lot more new stuff is on your way !

Vikram.