How do I go about hosting a silverlight 3.0 application inside of a wpf application in which I can pass data between the two? It needs to run without internet connectivity.
I have a project I'm working on to do that. It's very experimental right now...Hell I really haven't even announced it yet.
http://silverlightviewport.codeplex.com
-Jer
There is no known control that can do this seamlessly out there as yet. To do something like this, you will need to host a web control and use javascript to communicate with the host for interop. Which by the way is not at all recommended.
Related
We need to create an application that can be used via the browser but that can also be used while offline.
The browser Version will be used by our customer to do calculations. Each customer needs to log into the application with a username and Password.
The offline version will be used by our own employees. They need to be able to use this Version while not connected to a Network.
The data that is needed for the application will be stored in XML files.
We are mainly programming with C# and the .NET-Framework. We thought about using WPF for the client version.
I have read that you can use Silverlight or XBAP to create a browser Version of the WPF application. AFAIK Silverlight is a dying Technology. How about XBAP? Would you still invest into this Technology?
The other solution would be to create two front end applications: The WPF application as an offline application and a web application (e.g. ASP.NET MVC) as a web application. Thought, this would mean that we would have to create two frontends (more work).
Is there another alternative?
Would it be better to create an HTML/JavaScript application (e.g. with AngularJ or something similar)?
As a former Silverlight Developer I can only recommend not to use Silverlight for new application development. Microsoft has suspended the further development of Silverlight and you will not get any new features (only security fixes). I really liked the technology and the similarity to WPF but for me it is deprecated.
Even some Browsers (like Chrome) do not support Silverlight anymore and you need a workaround to get it running (See also Chrome doesn't support silverlight anymore? How to solve this?)
Develop a Backendsystem that provides a REST-API (using ASP.NET WebApi as an example) for your clients and develop a Browser client application using modern HTML/CSS/JavaScript Frameworks. If needed/required a desktop application using WPF that consumes the REST-API.
Silverlight may be dying, but that does not mean you should avoid using it. Silverlight is still a viable technology that you can use, however browser trends seem to be phasing out Silverlight support. As far as I know, Microsoft Edge browser is no longer supporting Silverlight, so you will need to use Internet Explorer. This isn't the end of the world, but it's something to think about.
As for WPF, this too is being replaced by Windows Universal Apps, albeit slowly. However this isn't too much of an issue as the skills you have learnt in WPF are easily transferrable. WPF itself is not receiving as many new features as it used to, you could say it's finished.
It isn't always easy to keep up with the latest trends, and there will always be something cool and hip just around the corner, however one thing is for sure, the .NET Platform, including the new refactored Universal App APIs are here to stay, and won't die any time soon.
The current trend sees Web Technologies, such as ASP.NET playing a much bigger role than traditional desktop/tablet/phone applications. I would say that developing for a web browser is certainly a popular choice.
That being said, Windows Universal Apps is also a good choice, in fact, any technology that makes use of the .NET Framework is ideal.
As for my recommendation, I would suggest looking into an ASP.NET web application or Web API to which a desktop application, such as WPF (still a viable technology for enterprise applications) or Universal Windows App can hook into. An ideal scenario would be that both applications share the same back-end code, which is certainly possible as they both use the .NET Framework.
For your requirements, it may even be possible to avoid having to create a desktop application altogether, a web application can be hosted on a machine on the local network and clients can still use the web app. This is assuming that these clients don't have internet access of course.
TL;DR: .NET is legit, use ASP.NET.
I am developing small institute management system as an academic project in my college.
I am going to develop the project in silverlight 4 or 5. In this project I want to provide attendance facility; i.e students will able to log in application from their respective machine which will be connected to LAN. There will be no internet connection available.
Can I develop this application which will not required internet connection once it is installed but can still accessible to different machine which are connected in a network over a LAN
1.How can I achive this?
2. should I use silverlight out of browser app or simple silverlight app
3. Is there any way to achive this using WPF?
After some research I found out the concept called Intranet which should solve my problem of sharing of source code and database.
About what technology should be used:
its better to develop this application in Silverlight as it is nothing but a subset of WPF.
Even better to develop the app in both technology to start with as I can use same XAML for both technology with few or no changes at all.
Connecting to database will be simpler in WPF than in Silverlight, as the later does not connect to the database directly and needs a service to achieve this. This service can be written using WCF or Ria service even in a php.
#Ash,
Silverlight can be desktop oriented, same as WPF. Caveat in some respects is that Silverlight is simplified to utilize Web Services communication, just like Adobe Flash is.
WPF is more oriented to non-Internat (ie Intranet/LAN) connections but pretty much utilizes the same .Net framework as Silverlight.
Although Silverlight is more platform independent than WPF, they operate the same.
You can take a Silverlight application and transition it to WPF with little to no changes (pending on the complexity of your application) to the code-base.
One benefit for WPF over Silverlight is the ability to utilize Click-Once deployment and Version control. Although you can implement a Click-Once styled Silverlight deployment it doesnt work the same as the majority of the Click-Once deployment models out there for the Desktop applications.
I hope this helps you.
I have been using WPF for a while, and I keep on realizing again and again that Microsoft invests its efforst in Silverlight, not in WPF (RIA Services, default theme, controls and more).
I thought it might be a good idea to migrate to Silverlight (i.e. creating standalone desktop apps with Silverlight 4.0), the question is whether this is possible or not.
BTW, I think LightSwitch applications are generated with Silverlight as standalone desktop apps.
From MSDN:
Silverlight 3 applications are no longer restricted to running in a browser. They can be run in a browser or it they can be detached from the browser and run from the desktop. These out-of-browser applications allow you to bring the richness of Silverlight 3 applications directly to the desktop without the restriction of running within a browser.
Link: Building An Out-of-Browser Client With Silverlight 3
It is possible to create standalone desktop apps(Out of browser apps) with silverlight version 3.0 or higher and it works great. Now it is also possible to install the out of browser app even without opening a browser as shown at this blog post .Silverlight is awesome and silverlight apps even run on MACs and Linux(limited support)
However, it is not true that Microsoft is only investing in silverlight. Microsoft is investing in WPF too. Though it is possible to create out of browser applications with silverlight, they have lot of limitations when compared to a full blown WPF applications.Dont forget that silverlight is just a subset of WPF, for example, silverlight doesnt have ADO.NET, Hardware device access etc. So if your application is merely a business application and you dont have to access hardware devices or database directly then silverlight might be an option, however if your application accessing client machines hardware resources directly then you are better off with WPF.
My suggestion is, If you know before hand that it is going to be a desktop application then go with WPF(or may be even XBAP). In my experience, useful applications grow with time, new features are always requested time to time. If in future,a feature is requested that cannot be accomplished with silverlight and can only be accomplished with WPF, then you will be in a big trouble because you need to rewrite your app in WPF and it will be hard for you to convince your CFO to allocate more fund just to implement one feature. Silverlight is not designed to develop desktop applications, its main goal is multi-platform support.
Silverlight 3 supports Out-of-Browser functionality.
Quote from Wikipedia silverlight page :
Silverlight 3 supports Out-of-Browser experiences, i.e., Silverlight applications can be installed to the system for offline access (provided the application manifest is designed to allow local installation) where they run outside the browser.
Also here is a quick howto
Out of browser applications have the same security restrictions as in browser applications.
With Silverlight 4 you can create full trust applications which have full access to the computer.
More on Network Security Access Restrictions in Silverlight
If you mean Out of Browser apps, certainly. The Seesmic Desktop 2 app is an excellent example of one of these apps, with it's own updating mechanism. Seems a no brainer to use the XAP/MEF plug-in Model and Silverlight in this manner.
Seesmic Desktop 2
We're developing an OOB app along the same lines, one internet download and you're done. You're not going to get exactly the same APIs as you get in WPF, though.
As others have pointed out, Silverlight apps can be installed to run 'out-of-browser', but even with elevated trust they still have significant restrictions on what they can do and certainly don't have "full access to the computer".
Creating an app from scratch, you may want to consider parallel Silverlight & WPF builds. The code can more-or-less be shared by adding the .cs files from one project (e.g. WPF) to the other (Silverlight) using "Add As Link". The XAML files cannot be linked this way and need to be duplicated, but that may not involve much more than copying & pasting, depending on your structure. There're good examples of this on the web.
Developing both types in parallel would likely involve a lot less effort than having to abruptly switch types at some point and discovering incompatibilities/limitations too late.
We are planning to build a new integration component that can provide us access to user's machine installed apps from our web site.
The first word that came to me was ActiveX, but our expertise with the technology was not the best in the past.
Thinkink a lit bit more, the work Silverlight also came to my head, but the full trust thing was one of the few things I remembered reading about the technology..
The question is: is there a way that Silverlight (2, 3, 4, whatever) can run as a full trusted application from within the browser?
Links are appreciated.
Filipe
Unfortunately, no. Full trust is a feature of Silverlight 4, currently in beta, and is restricted to out-of-browser applications.
Additionally, full trust SL4 applications do not have unrestricted access to the system (particularly file system), though this may change before before release (if I have anything to do with it).
Edit: If you are considering ActiveX (which is Windows/IE only), you might want to have a look at WPF, since it can run full trust from the browser (if it's in a trusted zone).
No, like Richard said, this is not at all possible inside the browser, even in SL4. There is a sandbox, and you live in it. You can talk to web services, other Silverlight applications or the browser.
By talking to the browser, I mean you can talk to the DOM and the Javascript engine. We needed to launch a Windows application and communicate to it via Silverlight. We accomplished this by putting a small ActiveX control in the web page. It is responsible for launching the WinForms application and handling inter-process communication to it.
This method has many drawbacks: It can only work in IE, and it only works in Windows. You might also run into permissions issues. The ActiveX component needs to be installed along with the desktop application, or as an additional download. The deployment story there is pretty awful, if you ask me.
In our case, the analysts were willing to deal with the restrictions for the re-usability of an existing application, and we consider it to be an optional feature.
Does it have to be a web application? sounds like you want a desktop app. It can be easiliy distributed with one Click deployment. Will work on windows only but since you were considering ActiveX sounds like that's what you need.
Well - if you're hosting the silverlight control from an ASP.NET application - Believe you have access to
Request.ServerVariables["AUTH_USER"];
...and you can pass that on to your control as a parameter.
D
Can Silverlight communicate with a MIDI instrument connected to the machine running the Silverlight application? In- or out-browser.
It appears that this is not possible in Silverlight. To communicate with a MIDI device, you would have to PInvoke methods in winmm.dll, and this (apparently) cannot be done in Silverlight. See:
http://forums.silverlight.net/forums/t/123673.aspx
This could be done easily in a WPF or WinForms application. It could also be done in a browser with XBAP, although you would need elevated permissions to access the winmm API, which would require a certificate. You can also still make ActiveX controls with .Net, but I think you would still need a certificate for this to get the proper permissions (although it might work with just a scary security confirmation dialog).
It's not possible to use .NET code directly in Silverlight because Silverlight has a different core.
All .NET classes that you want to reference in Silverlight need to be recompiled for Silverlight.
It's also not possible to access the underlying hardware directly, so i'm afraid you're stuck with a full-trust XBAP(you need to sign your app and the user will get an popup asking for permission). XBAP gives you all the .NET capabilities while running in the browser. XBAP will run on firefox/internet explorer on any >xp machine with .net 3.0 installed.
Hope this helps.
Silverlight 3 has an extensible multimedia pipeline for audio and video. You can procedurally create your own audio and play it. To implement what you want, you would have to write your own midi synthesizer.