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Installing Silverlight 3 - A Step By Step Guide for Upgrading your Development Environment
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Rating: 6 user(s) have rated this article
Posted by: Harsh Bardhan,
on 3/28/2009,
in category "Silverlight 2, 3 and 4"
Views: this article has been read 20599 times
Abstract: One of the most exciting announcements made in MIX 09 was Silverlight 3. We all have been waiting eagerly to see Silverlight grow in features. In this article, we will discuss how to install Silverlight 3 and upgrade your development environment.
Installing Silverlight 3 - A Step By Step Guide for Upgrading your Development Environment
One of the most exciting announcements made in MIX 09 was Silverlight 3. We all have been waiting eagerly to see Silverlight grow in features. The release of Silverlight 3 Beta is all about the same. You can check the new feature list in Silverlight 3 from the Silverlight’s community site
In this article, we will discuss how to install Silverlight 3 and upgrade your development environment. Since it is a beta release, Silverlight 3 is not recommended for production environments. Currently it is for making developers comfortable with Silverlight 3.
Let us get started with the steps:
Option 1: You do not have VS 2008 with SP1 installed
If you have an MSDN License, you can download Visual Studio 2008 from here.
Once you have downloaded these softwares, you can choose to do either an online .exe Web Install(536KB) or an offline .iso install (831.3 MB) for Service pack.
Option 2: You have Silverlight 2 installed
If you have already Silverlight 2 installed, go to Control Panel and uninstall all the Silverlight components (Silverlight SDK, Silverlight Tools for Visual Studio and Silverlight Runtime) as shown in the screenshot below. If you open the Control Panel, you will find these three Silverlight components.
Note: In order to install Silverlight 3, we will have to remove all the three of them:
You can remove them in any order. If you don’t have all three installed (for e.g if you have installed only the Silverlight Runtime), even in that case you have to remove them (whichever is installed).
Make sure that you have an internet connection while running this installer as it downloads files from the web.
Your Silverlight installation steps will look like this.
Click Next > Accept license agreement > you will get installation progress screen.
Step 2: (Optional) For Better design time support for Silverlight 3 application, download Expression Blend 3 Preview. Expression Blend has been a great help for Silverlight application designing and I highly recommend it. Run the Blend 3 installer and install Blend 3 into your system.
Step 3: Now install .Net RIA Services from here. These services are used for simplifying N-tier application pattern by bringing together ASP.Net and Silverlight.
Step 4: You can download and install additional controls from CodePlex site .It contains many useful controls.
Cheers! Your development environment is now ready and you can now create some rock solid applications in Silverlight 3. In my next article, I will be demonstrating one new feature of Silverlight 3 called Navigation Framework. Till then, I leave you with the newly installed Silverlight 3 and I hope you will start playing around with it!
Harsh Bardhan (MCTS) has developed IT solutions with a diverse background in server side and client side development. He is currently working with SymphonyServices as a Software developer. Harsh continues to be an integral part of open forums on cutting-edge technology like Silverlight, including the .NET Framework and Web Services. Harsh has expertise with many Microsoft technologies, including .NET, LINQ, WCF Service, Silverlight and a strong background in SQLServer.