I want to start silverlight development inside an application which developed by WPF.
Actually we want to add silverlight featuretoan existing WPF project. what should we consider and how todo this
I saw Getting started with Silverlight development and it was not my answer
I mark this as a Community Wiki.
Please clarify your intent. What do you mean by a Silverlight feature ?
Silverlight is a subset of WPF, but is intended for a Web application (i.e. running inside a Web browser, using the .NET framework provided by the browser plug-in), while WPF is meant for a desktop application (i.e. running outside of a browser, using the full .NET present on the disk).
(there is the notion of running WPF inside the browser, but that is still using the full .NET framework).
"Adding" Silverlight to WPF doesn't make much sense because you can accomplish whatever you need to do in regular WPF for the most part. If you already have a WPF application you are enforcing windows and the full .NET client run time so you are going to get any deployment benefits.
I assume what you may be considering (since you mentioned XBAP) is to re-write or recompile your current WPF XBAP application into a Silverlight application? This way you get cross platform web deployment with the full Client run time requirement.
If this is the case then you would not be "adding" to your existing solution. It would be more an exercise in porting the existing application over to Silverlight. With SL3 this is less painful then before (and if SL 4 is an option it will be an even better experience).
My first step would be to simply create a new Silverlight application and begin moving your code over and seeing how far you get.
Related
I'm browsing the net now for days, but still couldn't find what I'm looking for. Basically I'd like to develop my application interface, the GUI using HTML and CSS, with of course keeping the events, and the chance to modify parts of the layout at runtime (like a content of a div). The application is a database manager displaying visually the datas, and updating them at runtime.
IE aka using System.Windows.Forms.WebBrowser, this is what I try to avoid, it depends on the client system, stops at version 7, hard to link with the application
HTMLayout - http://www.terrainformatica.com/htmlayout/ : seems interesting, but the .net c# part, the nabu-library is dead
Sciter - http://www.terrainformatica.com/sciter/ : from the same group as HTMLayout, but couldn't really understand the integration, and I'm not sure if this is what I want - also couldn't find .net c# infos
Awesomium - http://awesomium.com/ : which really seems nice at first, but it needs .net 4 , and we have to stay at .net 2 - also it seems too much to handle, to use, and .net wiki is a little weak: http://wiki.awesomium.net/
and finally Gecko http://code.google.com/p/geckofx/ and Webkit http://code.google.com/p/open-webkit-sharp/ - but currently I'm not sure that they can be used to render the whole application, they just seem to be a WebBrowser with another engine.
Did I miss something?
Sciter integration principles are outlined here and here.
Sciter and HTMLayout both use the same integration principles and API architecture.
As of .NET wrapper, check these projects:
https://github.com/midiway/SciterSharp
https://code.google.com/p/expemerent/
Not sure if this fits your requirements but I currently use Webkit.NET http://webkitdotnet.sourceforge.net/
Essentially I use its Webkit Browser Control for the interface, store the HTML/CSS markup as variables and then I use C# to perform server-side logic, then output the results to the Browser Control (C# in this case acting in place of PHP since I am not including a portable web server with my application).
I did want to update it to achieve some newer functionality/standards so this article was most helpful.
http://peterdn.com/post/(First!)-Using-WebKit-nightly-builds-with-WebKit-NET.aspx
I want to write a desktop gadget that will group icons on my desktop (using c# & WPF).
It will be a docked window that I can drag icons to it and they will stay their. Also there can be couple of this windows.
Where do I begin?
**I saw all the post here about it but I got lost. Please direct me to examples and explanation pages.
To expand on cevik's answer:
You cannot create WPF applications as gadgets BUT you have two options (which aren't as bad as you'd expect).
The reason is that widgets are composed mainly of web pages (HTML) and not executable (*.exe).
The problem of course is that WPF will only work with & produce executables.
First option - Windows API:
When I said you can't what I really meant is you can't use the Windows Vista/7 gadget platform to make your widgets.
However, you can always achieve a similar effect by using the Windows API.
The Windows API will let you do stuff to windows such as making them always on the background of other programs, which sounds to me like ~80% there (The rest would be stuff like making sure your window doesn't get re-sized or minimized, etc.).
Just as a note, the function you'd be looking for to make the window behind all other windows would be SetWindowPos (specifically the second parameter).
However make sure there isn't a library which already implements these stuff because it can be rather difficult (and consist of A LOT of surprises).
Second option - Silverlight
silverlight can be perceived as WPF for the web.
That obviously solves our problem.
However there is a cost to it, as expected.
Silverlight doesn't have all the features WPF has (possibly not all of the .NET framework as-well, not sure about that as I'm not really using it).
However it should be more than enough to get you by so you should definitely check it out.
Once you have your Silverlight application (and webpage) you'll have to create a manifest & install the gadget to your desktop. See here how to do so.
Maybe this will help you.
Template to easily get started on developing a Sideber Gadget using Silverlight 3.0 or 4.0 controls in C#.
I am going to start a new (Right-To-Left) WPF project and the Main reason is to provide a single UI for the application in Windows and Web.
What Should I consider?
Which WPF Controls should/shouln't (can/can't) I use?
Do I Have to Use Silverlight? (I'm not interest)
Should I use XBAP project orWindows Project with Page base modules?
TIA
Your choices are indeed XBAP (WPF Browser App) and SilverLight.
You can easily google to find lots of comparisons, here is a short and simple one.
You main decision factor is your target audience. Do you want to support the Apple platform and maybe even Linux? Then use SilverLight.
If you're sure you only have Windows clients (Web and Desktop) you could use the more powerful WPF. But do write the WBA first so you don't run into permission issues later.
Today we have a windows application that, using an OCX, creates a web page (visible by a WebBrowser control in a small .NET WinForm application) and communicates through COM to the main application/client. (not relevant but this is Pascal)
I'm currently responsible to re create this application in a web environment so we can have the same functionality shared through Web as the user can see the same in a Web Browser.
The Windows application has almost 4 years on it and I need to re create everything from scratch, and all the bugs/features find in the future in the Windows Application I have to re create them again in the Web...
Ohh well, you can see where this will end.
I was thinking... is there any way I can create a Wrapper, even using 3rd party commercial objects, to:
Communicate with the COM Object
Can expose the content of the OCX
(this in my most confortable language, ASP.NET C#, but other are welcome)
I was thinking out loud, can this be accomplish with a Java Applet? Silverlight 4?
Any ideas or any point to the right road will be appreciated.
You may want to consider using Silverlight 4. Although it's not fully baked (Microsoft announced it as Release Candidate status yesterday or today) it has COM support but will run in a web enabled way.
The fact that your previous application is Windows/OCX tells me that the chief weakness of this approach, which would be platform neutrality, is less of an issue.
I'm a beginner in programming. I've just made a program called "Guessing Game". And it seems to work fine. Can I integrate it into a website? The CMS that I'm using is Mambo.
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additional info's
Thanks for all your suggestions.
I still don't have any background about Silverlight, WPF and Java Script which I think sounds good. I'm using Windows and I programmed my "Guessing Game" from Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 and it's using Window application forms.
Yes I guess, for the moment I let it be and start to learn Silverlight or Java Script so that I can integrate it on my website:-)
Thanks for all your input guys:-)
Cheers
A standalone executable cannot be directly integrated into a website. You have a few choices though:
Allow your users to download the executable and run it locally for themselves
Rewrite your program in JavaScript to have it run directly inside of an HTML page, though this could obviously involve a fair amount of reworking
Use Microsoft's Silverlight technology, which allows you to code in C# and produce a web-based frontend similar to Adobe Flash. Your program logic should remain the same and you should only have to change the UI code. In fact if you're already using WPF for the front end, the transition will be even easier.
There are several questions that you still need to answer.
What is your server running? If its not Windows, your exe will not run at all unless it is compatible with Mono or a similar framework for your server's operating system.
How does your "Guessing game" interact with the user? If it is through a WinForms GUI, it will you will not be able to use that GUI on the web. If your game is a WPF application your easiest route may be to port it to Silverlight and serve it up on a web page.
It is typically not trivial to make a regular windows application run in a web environment since on on the web you are really running in the browser, not on Windows.
Yes - in general, when you're talking about software, anything is possible. The question is, how difficult will it be?
To understand that, you have to give us more details about "Guessing Game" including how it is designed, what it's interfaces are, how readily extensible it is, and how prepared you are to change or extend it.
For example, if it is a Windows Forms GUI app, then it will be diifficult to integrate into a web app. If it is a console app, then it will be a little easier. If you can modify it to run as a Windows Service, then a little easier. If you can modify it to accept input from the network (as opposed to getting input solely from the keyboard + mouse), still easier.
You may be able to use reflection to load your assembly into the web application, but most likely, the answer is no.
Your best solution is probably to re-write the game in javascript.
The short answer to your question is now. I'm presuming that since you're running Mambo you're web environment is a LAMP stack. However, you're "Guessing Game" is most likely a Windows application from the sound of it. For a beginner in programming, there is no integration path you're going to be able to take that will allow you to have your game running on your website.
However, here are avenues you can take, which will require a significant amount of time to learn. I'm not saying you shouldn't take time to learn, by all means you should! I'm simply trying to illustrate the fact that this is not something that is going to be doable in a couple of hours.
Silverlight - allows you to run C# code with a WPF like interface on your client's browser and can integrate with your web site through javascript.
Let your client download it from your website and run it off of their PC. This would actually be fairly trivial and would be your quickest option, but it sounds like it's not the kind of integration you were looking for.