I'm looking at a scenario where I need to create a single "master" Silverlight application and then add "child" applications for an out-of-browser Silverlight application.
The scenario is something like this.
A user will visit a gameboard web site
and choose a game to play. Let's call
it Checkers. He likes it, so then he
installs the out-of-browser app to his
desktop. He then finds Chess, and
installs that too. For both games,
while played on the site, he has stats
(games played, win/loss records,
etc.). For each game on the site, he
navigates to a different page.
But now he wants to play offline and
view his stats and other cross-games
information. He wants to have a single
app to launch to play either game.
From his single out-of-browser app, he
sees that Go is also available, and he
places a checkmark against it to
download on his next connection.
Does anyone have any experience at developing multiple out-of-browser Silverlight apps that reside within a single master app? What considerations need to be had for this type of design? How would this work in terms of install experience from different web pages?
What you need is MEF (which will be included in the CLR of the upcoming Microsoft .NET Framework 4)
You Can read more about it here , here & there's an example here
Is there a reason why every game must be a separate application? It would be much easier to just install the master application as an OOB app and then have it load new XAPs from IsolatedStorage at runtime depending on what games the user has downloaded (installed). Or perhaps I am misunderstanding your scenario?
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 have a winforms application and was wondering whether I should attempt to move it to Windows store app (and WPF) or not. I would expect metro style apps to have the same potential as desktop apps, but what got me wondering is the fact that VS 2012 is not a metro app. It doesn't really surprise me much as every metro app I've seen so far look like a phone app that can't really do much and I can't imagine how VS would look like as a metro app.
Seems to me like Microsoft wants to slowly move everything to metro, otherwise I don't see the point on introducing a whole new visual experience just to get stuck with having to switch between metro and desktop, but even Notepad is still a desktop application. So my question is, basically, is every kind of application supposed to be movable to metro or is metro only for small phone-like applications?
I don't believe that Microsoft is intending every application to end up Metro. I see more lightweight types apps going to Metro. Heavy duty line-of-business apps will stay on the desktop side of things.
I do see an opportunity for writing both desktop and Metro style apps in enterprise environments though. Imagine this hypothetical scenario:
In an enterprise, I can see Accounts Receivable running the full-blown, monolithic, desktop application on their desktops just like they run them under Win7 because they’re needs are pretty extensive.
The receptionist will run a touch enabled laptop with a Metro app that is tied into just the corporate appointments.
The guys on the loading dock will be running Win8 phones that have the intake/outtake app showing schedules for deliveries and what not.
Managers and executives have Metro tablets that have an app that shows metrics: lots of pretty charts and graphs showing the current condition of what and how the company is operating in it’s different lines of business.
For the users that need the complexity, it’s desktop mode, but for the users that perform smaller, specific computer tasks, touch-enabled Metro apps for them.
Metro-style apps are for content consumption, like you would find on a tablet.
Classical desktop apps are for content creation.
I think metro apps are an additional feature and I do not think, that they are a serious replacement for desktop applications. If you want to deploy your apps to tablet PCs, phones or any other touchscreen/handheld devices, metro style would be a good choice. At the moment there are just not many consumers for metro apps as Windows 8 has not even come to the markets.
As you already mentioned, on desktop PCs metro apps are very uncomfortable and do not provide the full functionality as desktop applications can do.
So my question is, basically, is every kind of application supposed to be movable to metro or is metro only for small phone-like applications?
I don't think so, as this means automatically that many customers who have used previous versions of Windows would have to learn working with the metro interface.
Metro apps provide much more functionality than desktop gadgets have done in Vista, as they can be programmed using C# or other .Net languages, but metro apps use up too much space to be controlled with a simple mouse.
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.
I would like to develop a web conferencing system (or web classroom) as a graduation project using Silverlight similar to
iVocalize
which is a java applete .
I don't know if what is possible for a java applete to perform on the PC is also possible for Silverlight, or is SL more restricted.
There are two functionalities (which are related i guess) that iVocalize provides which i would also like to include in my SL application, which are:
A participant may broadcast a live video stream of the desktop to other participants so that they will be able to follow all activities performed on the computer.
A participant may take a snapshot of the desktop
If the previous functionalities are not possible in SL than do you think that WPF may be used instead?
Thank you vey much.
Actually, you can use Silverlight 4 Web cam features.
With Silverlight 4, you can develop full-trust Silverlight application that can capture the snapshot of user desktop.
Using Silverlight it is possible.. Have a look at this open source silverlight project. Its has desktop sharing as one of the module
http://silverlightvideochat.codeplex.com/
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