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Silverlight 3 Out of Browser Feature
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Rating: 3 user(s) have rated this article
Posted by: Malcolm Sheridan,
on 7/30/2009,
in category "Silverlight 2, 3 and 4"
Views: this article has been read 8194 times
Abstract: The following article demonstrates how to use the out of browser feature in Silverlight 3.
Silverlight 3 Out of Browser Feature
One of the most requested features of Silverlight has been an out of browser experience. This is now possible with Silverlight 3. You can configure Silverlight based applications so that users can install them from their host web pages and run them outside the browser. When an application is properly configured, Silverlight displays an install option on its right-click menu. You can also provide your own UI for installation to supplement or replace the right-click option. This article will focus on how to set up your application so that it can be installed and ran outside of the browser.
To begin with open Visual Studio 2008 and choose File > New > Project > Silverlight > Silverlight Application. To enable the application to run out of the browser, all you need to do is right click on the project and choose Properties. The project properties window will appear. You must select Enable running application out of the browser:
Configuration
To configure the out of browser settings, click the Out-of-Browser Settings button:
The screen above allows you to set a title, width and height, a shortcut name that the user can recognize on their desktop or start menu and an icon. The icon you add will be the icon associated with the shortcut. Click OK to save your changes.
Once you have configured your settings, an OutOfBrowserSettings.xml file is created. This is the file that will be compiled into the xap file when you deploy your Silverlight application:
Installation
To install the application run your project. Right click the application and choose Install Hello world! Onto this computer. This causes the following dialog box to appear, which enables the user to specify the location of the installation:
Uninstall
To uninstall the Silverlight application you must launch the application. While its running, right click and choose Remove this application:
It is important to realise that even though the application is running out of the browser, the application is still subject to the same security sandbox restrictions as ordinary web applications. This is a really cool feature of Silverlight 3. In some upcoming articles I’ll focus on writing Silverlight applications that make use of this feature.
The entire source code of this article can be downloaded over here
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Malcolm Sheridan is an independent contractor who has been working with Microsoft technologies since VB4. Malcolm has worked with .NET since its inception and thoroughly enjoys ASP.NET.