Best practices around Silverlight 2 GDR 1? - silverlight

I noticed a few tweets this morning about a new version of Silverlight having been released - Silverlight 2 GDR 1 (2.0.40115.0). Details of what/why/should I target it/is it backward compatible/etc seem incredibly thin on the ground.
Hitting this Silverlight page on Microsoft.com tells me my version (RTW) is now out of date and I should upgrade to GDR 1. But hitting silverlight.net - there's no mention of it, the Silverlight elements on the page don't tell me my version is out of date and the Getting Started page still links to RTW tools.
This kinda leads me to presume that if you upgrade your dev tools to target the GDR release, then your users will need to upgrade their Silverlight install also?
A few details on what's in GDR can be found in the release notes - but it sure would be nice if Microsoft would clarify it's purpose and suggested adoption. Anyone got any more details?

Tim Heuer explains all: http://timheuer.com/blog/archive/2009/02/19/silverlight-2-gets-minor-update-gdr1.aspx

It seems to be only bug fixing.
So if your applications (so your users) are not concerned by those bugs, it is not mandatory to update your plugin for the moment.

Related

VS 2010 SP1 Forcing Silverlight Upgrade

On our developer machines, we have Silverlight 4 installed. We upgraded to VS 2010 SP1, and now our Silverlight projects won't open; it is prompting us that we need to install the newer version of Silverlight, and takes us to a link to download Silverlight 5.
We are not ready to go to Silverlight 5 yet, and need to be able to open up our Silverlight 4 projects in VS 2010 SP1.
Any suggestions?
This sounds like it may be a duplicate of this question, but since you say you had Silverlight 4 installed before it may not be.
I recently rebuild my development machine and ran into a similar problem, but closer to that other question. Ultimately, I found this blog post, which led me to a installer for Silverlight 4 Developer Runtime.
There was one issue the author mentioned, that I have not run into yet:
I have noticed a large number of people hitting this page. Well,
let me help you guys out a little more. It turns out that EVERY time
Microsoft decides to update the Silverlight runtime. A patch, string
change, someone looked at it wrong, the Developer runtime gets
invalidated.
You will need to reinstall it each time. So make sure you keep it
handy! Thanks Microsoft for such a wonder feature. I love reinstalling
things every week.
EDIT:
I ran into the issue mentioned above and reinstalling the Silverlight 4 Developer Runtime did not fix the issue for me. I ended up installing the Silverlight 5 Developer Runtime (32 bit, 64 bit), which I obtained from this page, and that fixed the issue.

Report viewer control for VB.Net1.1

Good morning fellow stack overflow people, I have a question that sounds like the start of something from the daily wtf.
The company that I work for is not so much sacred of new technology they just seem to let things slip, you know the type, “It worked 5/6+ years ago so I don’t see why we should change it”
Despite this I have managed by hook or by crook to get an installation of SQL server 2008R2 to develop on which has the reporting services. Excellent I think, I can finally start moving some of the access applications to VB.net and use SSRS to provide some embedded reports, everyone is happy.
But not so fast, it turns out the standard build of desktop here only has .net1.1. I have managed to dust off a copy of visual studio 2003 (The last edition that could target 1.1) and built a few little tests to check DB connectivity. The problem I am having is the report viewer control is only available in .net2.0 and above.
So what options do I have for displaying my SSRS reports in a VB.net1.1 thick client application?
Before anyone asks the following options are out
Going anything web based (Farrrrrrrrrr too modern for the company + no web server)
Upgrading to a version of .net released after George Bush the 2nd lost an election but still became president
Changing jobs
Sorry for the long question but I thought some background would help
I would go for a browser control but I think they only started including that in 2.0. But I think you can still do something like that in 1.1 (it has been to long to be sure).
I think if you install SSRS on the sqlserver you could turn on IIS on that server and then use that to make your reports and show them in the browser control.
SSRS (I'm pretty sure it came out somewhere around 2005) is not old enough to have many other options.
If you work with VB.NET 1.1 all the time then it is strange question. How did you program in it before?
Use any available dataview control (I already do not remember - DataGrid, DataList, Repeater) from .NET1.1. There is nothing in ReportViewer that could not be done before its appearance, in .NET1.1.
What is the problem?
Update:
I remember seeing code projects reproducing ReportViewer in .NET1.1 few years ago though I cannot find it now. Anyway, it seems to me the problem of just reading .NET1.1 docs and searching internet.
Sorry if this is a blunt statement but sometimes, you've got to bite the bullet and do the right thin.
If you really want to use reports and you've found the minimum version of the .NET framework is 2.0 then go ahead, find an internet connection somewhere and upgrade the computers.
If you can't do that, forget about it and go back to your VB6 or whatever you're using. Besides, .NET Framework 2.0 sp1 is less than 30MB. If you can't find a decent internet connection (either at your workplace or somewhere else) to download it then you might as well abandon it.
And I'll add as well. VS2003 IS OLD! Get yourself minimum VS2005, even if it's Express edition, it's good enough and stop whining.
Someone had the same question back in Feb. Maybe this might send you down the right path:
Using SSRS in ASP.NET 1.1

Deploying ODP.NET WPF application

Background: I developed a small .NET 3.5 WPF application that connects to an Oracle 9i database. Thinking that the ODP.NET version had to match the database, I downloaded and used an [older version][1] (9i, release 2, to be more specific) of the Oracle Data Access tools.
I'm basically done the application now and need to deploy it. Then I looked at the deployment story for ODP.NET, thinking it would be included as a prerequisite by ClickOnce and I wouldn't have to do anything. Lesson. Learned.
Everything I've read about deployment for ODP.NET talks about using XCOPY with a newer version of the Oracle tools than what I have used to this point. Not much is actually said about 9i in the documentation I've read to this point.
So what should I do?
Thanks for the help!
Here is a similar post where the answer was to change to use a 3rd party library:
ODP.NET and ClickOnce possible?
I think you area in trouble as changing libraries may involve you doing a full retest of your application - this may of course be easier done than said if it is a small app or you have good automated test coverage. Of course it depends how many computers you are deploying to. Personally I would be more inclined to stick with oracle odp and move to the latest version. If you deploy odp "the hard way" you still get the benefit of click once for future redeployments.

SL 4 Version Hell? The silverlight developer runtime is not installed please install a matching version

I've been developing for and running Silverlight 4 for about a week. A week ago I installed the Silverlight 4 design time components to develop and debug silverlight for VS 2010 - I posted some of these apps and they were used by users running SL4. Today, I went to a website that told me to upgrade my SL (I think it was the MS expression site) - so I did that and all the sudden I get this error when running SL 4 apps within VS 2010.
The silverlight developer runtime is not installed please install a matching version
Installing the latest version of the Silverlight SDK does not correct this. Basically I am stuck and unable to run Silverlight apps from VS2010.
Are versioning problems like this a common theme in SilverLight? The only thing I can think of is that there is a minor version difference between the versions used on the the MS Expression web site and the version (SL4) I installed from MS site a few days ago? However re-installing the latest version of SL4 does not correct this.
Any help?
The developer runtime is a different download than the normal "end user" runtime.
Again quoting from Tim Heur's Blog, you need to look for the link under "getting the updates" that points to the developer runtime. This will allow you to debug etc.

Silverlight - where do you start (for free)?

First I've read loads of posts and sites that recommend going to http://silverlight.net/GetStarted/ to get started but I do not have visual studio and I'm not going to purchase it just to 'maybe' learn some silverlight that I'm not going to be able to use for a little while.
The reason being that I've already installed visual studio and all the other things required during a quiet period of work, then another project came up and by the time I got back to thinking about silverlight the trial period has finished.
I have not done C# or XAML (mainly Java, AS3 & MXML, hence the lack of MS tools) but I'd like to look into silverlight when I'm quiet to create some test projects and to determine where I can use it if anywhere. Is there a toolset that will let me learn and use all that is required without purchasing the software (perhaps it would have a watermark like the flex datacharts used to have, unless you purchased them, maybe an eclipse plugin - although I imagine I'm being a bit optimistic here).
If there isn't such a thing then perhaps MS should look into this, Adobe recently let anyone unemployed/students etc to get flexbuilder for free to increase its uptake. That would be great is MS did something similar.
If you are a student, you can get professional Microsoft tools for free through the Dreamspark program. http://www.dreamspark.com
You can download Blend preview 3 and visual studio 2010 for free and use it. You have the tools and knowledge now ;-)
Check out Bizspark too.
Allegedly, you can now use one of Microsoft's free "Express" development systems to develop Silverlight apps.
http://www.bluerosegames.com/SilverlightBrassTacks/post/You-can-now-write-Silverlight-apps-in-Visual-Web-Developer-Express.aspx
In addition to the free-as-in-free-beer options from MS that other answers mention: if you only want to play around with Silverlight for now, consider trying Moonlight -- it may not yet be ready for production work, but nevertheless usable for learning purposes.
One place you can go is to the express web site on Microsoft.com. You can get free, albeit trimmed back, versions of the current release of Visual Studio and SQL Server there.
You can also get a trial version of Expression Blend 2. Blend is a design oriented tool for creating Silverlight applications.
You can also usually find betas of upcoming releases without much trouble.
Silverlight + Eclipse:
http://www.eclipse4sl.org/download/
And how to workaround Express for SL
http://www.informikon.com/blog/howto-silverlight-and-visual-studio-express.html
Good luck
Braulio

Resources