Silverlight 3 Out of Browser Feature

Introduction

The out of browser experience, is now possible with Silverlight 3. When an application is properly configured, Silverlight displays an install option on its right-click menu. You can also provide your own UI for installation to supplement or replace the right-click option. This article will focus on how to set up your application so that it can be installed and ran outside of the browser.

To begin with

•    Open Visual Studio 2008
•    Choose File > New > Project > Silverlight > Silverlight Application.
•    Right click on the project and choose Properties. You must select Enable running application out of the browser (as in the figure below). Thus enable the application to run out of the browser.

Configuration

To configure the out of browser settings, click the Out-of-Browser Settings button:

The screen above allows you to set a title, width and height, a shortcut name that the user can recognize on their desktop or start menu and an icon. The icon you add will be the icon associated with the shortcut. Click OK to save your changes.

Once you have configured your settings, an OutOfBrowserSettings.xml file is created. This is the file that will be compiled into the xap file when you deploy your Silverlight application:

Installation

To install the application run your project. Right click the application and choose Install Hello world! Onto this computer. This causes the following dialog box to appear, which enables the user to specify the location of the installation:

The application name on the right-click menu and in the dialog box corresponds to the shortcut name in the out of browser configuration. The image on the dialog box corresponds to the largest icon in the configuration. If you do not specify any icons in the configuration, the default icon is used, as shown in the example image. Once installed, navigate to the location you installed it and you can click on the icon and run the Silverlight application. Cool!

Uninstall

To uninstall the Silverlight application you must launch the application. While its running, right click and choose Remove this application:

Thus the client can update the application even when the internet is not connected and later it gets updated to the application on line. So from now connectivity doesn’t become a problem
Isn’t it a really cool feature?.