We are using a Sliverlight player to play videos on a .Net website. This player is available on Codeplex at http://slvideoplayer.codeplex.com/releases/view/21749. This player plays videos from another website served over http (Ex:[http://ThirdpartyWesbite.com/video1.wmv]). We are currently in the process of implementing SSL on our website and configured our development environment with SSL only to find that the Silverlight video player cannot play the videos anymore. A little bit of research seemed to indicate that Silverlight does not allow cross-scheme (https -> http) communication. More specifically Information available on MSDN at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb820909.aspx seems to indicate Silverlight pretty much prohibits cross-scheme communication.
It is possible that if the third party website serves files over https then my problem would likely go away. Unfortunately I cannot make them implement SSL on their site. I just would like to know if there is anybody in the community that faced a similar situation and were able to find any work-around. Any help is greatly appreciated.
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I'm building a LMS system using Sharepoint (WSS 3.0) with the Sharepoint Learning Kit (SLK). One of the requirements is to be able to host Silverlight content within the SCORM package. Has anyone done this before? I haven't been able to find much (anything) online that talks about how to do this. Most of the content tools that exist for SCORM are able to handle Flash, but I haven't come across anything that will do Silverlight.
If all else fails, I'll try to manually build a SCORM package, but I'd really like to find some examples or howtos of doing this with Silverlight first.
Has anyone done this before?
I haven't done it personally before, but from a SCORM perspective the content is a black box. It shouldn't matter if it is implemented in Flash, Silverlight, or whatever. The complex part about using plug-in technologies with SCORM is establishing communication with the SCORM API via JavaScript. In Flash, it can be tricky to communicate establish a communication link between the Flash movie and JavaScript in the browser. It looks like this is a straightforward process in Silverlight.
Check out SCORM CLOUD, and then build an API to talk to it. http://www.scorm.com/
Hope this helps,
Dan Linstedt
http://danLinstedt.com
Are ActiveX applets as a technology supported by Microsoft dead?
What are the alternatives to ActiveX to create extremely rich internet applications using Microsoft Technologies? (Silverlight does not cut it for me, as it doesnt give me access to serial ports - or does it?)
You can of course still make ActiveX applications, but know that they will only work with Internet Explorer, unless users of other browsers install hosting plugins, that aren't all that good anyway.
In either case, a web application that requires access to a serial port? Are you sure you're not better off with a desktop application instead? A simple refresh and you've cut off that serial port.
Not all applications belong in the browser.
If you want to launch an application via a web browser that can access the serial ports, one option would be to use Java Web Start with JavaFX as the rich interface API, and Java Communications for the serial port access. You could end up with a cross-platform application at the end as well.
Or just write a native application using your favoured Windows toolkit if you absolutely are restricted to using Microsoft tools.
ActiveX as technology is very much alive, and will remain for many years to come. But its usage for Internet is dead. ActiveX is to be only used from within windows stand-alone applications.
ActiveX as of 2015 is a dead technology that even the maker is no longer interested in continuing to use it. Here is something to read.
No, Silverlight is designed from the ground up to be completely sandboxed, no way to bypasss that (thank god).
If you need that kind of access, but are looking for an easy deployment, I would suggest building a Clickonce application.
There are restrictions, because I think by default they are not full trust, but that's the best you will get.
It's also going to be the only easy route if you need printing (unless you are willing to round-trip to a server to generate a PDF file).
If you need direct access to some hardware (like for a POS software with cash drawer, receipt printer etc), you need to go "desktop". Clickonce can give you some deployment options, XBAPs can give you the "browser experience", but you are going to have to make compromises based on what your "hardware access needs" are.
EDIT:
I didn't notice the Silverlight exclusion in the original question. My comment it not really applicable. Sorry!
I don't know that I would call ActiveX dead just yet, but I would be cautious if you are planning to build an application based upon this technology. My recommendation would be to use Silverlight. This provides much of the functionality that is commonly desired in ActiveX controls, but uses the newer .NET technologies.
There is alot of talk about using Silverlight for media playback, but it has many powerful feature that can also be used to create Line-of-Business applications as well. In fact there is a great podcast episode on DotNetRocks that discusses this exact subject.
Here are a few more links that might point you in the right direction:
Microsoft Silverlight Getting Started
Silverlight 2 and a Glimpse of Silverlight 3 by Scott Guthrie
To the best of my knowledge, Silverlight 4 still doesn't give you direct access to serial ports, but it does give you access to any local web cam and microphones now. You could presumably also run Silverlight 4 out-of-browser, which gives you access to COM objects, and you could write a quick-and-dirty COM object which wrapped serial port access. That said, I also agree with what folks said above about not all applications belonging in the browser.
Does anyone know of any commercial web sites that currently use Silverlight other than Microsoft's own sites?
The silverlight site has a huge showcase gallery, you can check that out.
http://silverlight.net/Showcase/
Netflix instant streaming.
(Incidentally, the site linked above doesn't work on my machine. Yay for completely ignoring web standards!)
I like AOL's webmail client.
http://ria.mail.aol.com/
It is still in beta, but it is fast.
I found another awesome Silverlight webmail client - called Silvermail:
http://silvermail.com.au
It's pretty slick and really fast, and it is totally free for use in the public domain... I use it with gmail because our corporate firewall won't let me check email while at work, plus I find the gmail interface too confusing... Silvermail is really simple.
A couple of friends have used it successfully for POP3 and it also works with Hotmail and Yahoo.
This Silverlight site used to work with Moonlight in the 2008, 2009 era--that was at least 2 versions of Moonlight ago: http://www.recreation.gov/camping/Furnace_Creek_Ca/r/campgroundDetails.do?contractCode=NRSO&parkId=70978&topTabIndex=CampingSpot . I just downloaded the latest version of Moonlight 3.99.0.3 and it doesn't work. Silverlight is used just for the map option, so click on the button labelled Facility Map. It is just about in the center of the first page (top to bottom and side to side).
I want to use a Silverlight application in a cloud on Azure. The communication between the Silverlight application and the WebRole is a WCF-Service with Basic-HTTP-Binding.
My problem is, that the communication doesn't work. I think the endpoint-address is not correct, but I'm not sure.
Can someone help me?
Have you tried using Fiddler that will at least tell you if the end point is correct.
It should also help if there are any permissions issues.
I found these samples cited by the Silverlight Web Services team blog. The Known Issues Wiki is also very helpful. These examples use a binary HTTP binding instead of BasicHttpBinding but they get the job done.
If you are running Vista, like I am, You may need to register the WCF MIME types for IIS 7. You can do this be running a command prompt in elevated mode and executing this command:
C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v3.0\Windows Communication Foundation\ServiceModelReg.exe -i
There is an issue with linking to Webservices in Azure. I would check the endpoint in the Silverlight application and make sure it is the same as the port used in your Azure application.
I came across the same issue when working through the Azure Labs and rewrote Excercise 3 (using WCF) so that it would work - that is now available on CodeProject (http://www.codeproject.com/articles/34612/Getting-WCF-to-work-with-Azure.aspx).
I based that on a posting from David Burela's House-o-blog and his description of the problem can be found on his blog.
Anyone have recommendations for webcast software, similar to the Silverlight app here: http://channel9.msdn.com/pdc2008/TL57/
I looked at a couple other questions posted here, but I don't want a hosted solution.
The PDC Channel 9 Site is using the player base from http://codeplex.com/SL2VideoPlayer with some of their modifications (which we plan to roll into that project). They have a Windows Media Streaming server back-end delivering the media.
For Flash there is JW FLV Player. Just put the files on your own web server. On CodePlex you can find a Silverlight 2.0 media player.