Run Silverlight 3 standalone - c#

So I have a small Silverlight application that plays a slideshow of pictures. What I want to do is burn the application to a cd and mail the cd to my mother so that she can run the silverlight application on her computer. I am using Silverlight 3. How do I create a standalone silverlight application/player?

What's New in Silverlight 3
Silverlight 3 Out of Browser Capabilities
The new out of browser experience in
Silverlight 3 enables users to place
their favorite Silverlight
applications directly onto their PC
and Mac, with links on the desktop and
start menu—all without the need to
download an additional runtime or
browser plug-in. Further, the new
experience enables Silverlight
applications to work whether the
computer is connected to the Internet
or not—a radical improvement to the
traditional Web experience.....
How to Create an Out of Browser Application.
Silverlight 3 as a Desktop Application

A few things come to mind:
Why can't your end-user just use the internet for that?
Any Silverlight app running on a machine would require Silverlight be installed.
Assuming the end-user has Silverlight installed, you can burn a copy of the Silverlight XAP + TestPage.html and have the end-user open up the HTML page. You might even create an autoplay file to do that once the CD is in the drive.
I'd also include the Silverlight install EXE on that disc and maybe fire it up with a silent install with the autoplay script.
OOB isn't what you're looking for.
OOB requires that the app be first viewed, then installed locally.
There OOB doesn't support "View me without installing me" mode.

Related

Application deployed via windows store

I am considering deploying my application via the windows store apart from the traditional website download (via an msi).
I created the appx package with the Desktop App Converter tool.
The application does some updates checks, and when being deployed via the windows store I would like to disable such checks.
The question is how to detect if the application was deployed via normal msi or via the windows store.
To add to nikos' comment, GetCurrentPackageFamilyName will return an error APPMODEL_ERROR_NO_PACKAGE if it's run outside the UWP context (i.e. the MSI scenario you mention).
Note that this API is dependent on Windows 8 or greater, which will preclude the app from running on Windows 7. Your can work around this by dynamically loading the API. More info here.

Automatic windows app installation without admin rights

We have a business application which requires to use windows API libraries such as user32.dll etc. to take screenshots of the user desktop. This is currently built using C#.NET / VB.NET.
The business requirement now is to find a way to be able to execute/deploy the application to user machines with least user intervention. Additionally, the user might not have admin rights on his machine.
Please share any suggestions on the options. It would have been great to move the windows application into a web application, but I can only think of options such as ActiveX or Silverlight which might be able to user low level APIs, but these are already being discontinued.
ideal would have been some approach, where the user visits a website, maybe cliska button to install, and that website installs this windows application on the user machine.
The target environment is Windows 8. So I believe we may can assume that the .net framework would be existing already, BUT we do not know if in future perhaps the application in future might require any external referenced dll which might need to be pushed to the user machine.
If you use the standard clickonce application deployment that comes with Visual Studio, you can deploy the website to a website, and users can install form the webpage, installing any prerequisites for the program.
In addition, it installs to a user's appdata, so no admin rights are required. The only time admin rights are needed is when you install/update the .Net framework.
For bonus points, the clickonce deployment will automatically update the application on the client's PC when you publish new updates.

c# file or MainPage.xml.cs in Cordova/Phonegap windows project

I am converting my app from a WP8 project to a windows project. If you run the command
cordova platform add windows
Cordova will create a solution with 4 projects, one for Windows 8.1, 1 for Windows 8, one for Windows Phone and the shared project. From what i can see, these are javascript projects, but i need to run some c# code to start a background service when the app starts. In a WP8 project you can add this code to the Mainpage.xml.cs file.
Is there no c# code that runs in these types of projects, or can you attach any code to run upon startup? How do people start background tasks in these apps else?
In Apache Cordova main page, there is a bunch of links to download Cordova Component for each platform. Choose the one for WP8 GitHub repository, and you will be redirected to
https://github.com/apache/cordova-wp8
Download the repository as a Zip from the right hand side of the page, after unzipping the file, you will happily find that the Cordova library and the project template are written in C#.

Create an app that runs in Win7 mode and Metro mode

I want to create an app that runs in desktop mode when installing in Windows 7 and runs in metro mode when installing in Windows 8 (like google chrome).
I have Visual Studio 2013 and I can create apps than run in desktop mode or metro mode, but not both modes
In any case, thanks
Unfortunately that is not possible by designing one application. You need to create two different application and through the setup, understand which version the operating system has and install the corresponding version. Although you can take advantage of Portable Libraries (See Cross-Platform Development with the .NET Framework) to write most of your codes and then write the UI separately for each environment. The easiest way might be to design your application based on MVVM and then almost you need to write your Views twice one for Metro style and one for WPF application although the codes would be quite similar.

How do you deploy an ActiveX control for ie from a VS2008 project?

What are the steps to deploying a project created in VS2008 (windows forms and c#) as a ActiveX control hosted in ie? I have a file uploader project that I want to be hosted on a webpage that users can navigate to, click 'trust this active x control' and the application runs on the page in the browser, just like a java application.
To be clear, I'm not looking for ClickOnce (that is an installer) and I don't want the user to have to modify their .Net security or add a trusted site (so just putting the .dll file in a OBJECT tag doesn't work). Do I need some digital signature, some certificate something? I've found references to this but no step-by-step guide to it (like I got for java).
Any suggestions? This seemed like it'd be the easiest part of the project but its turning out to be by far the hardest, I can't make any headway on it.
Thanks,
Sam
And the answer is, sadly, that .net "activeX controls" aren't like COM activeX controls (VB6), even if you make the .net control com-visible you can't register it with the OS the same way. What you have to do is:
1) Create your .net dll file
2) Create an installer exe (I did it with InstallShield, looks like it can also be done in VS)
3) Package that installer into a cab file
4) Point to that cab file in IE.
What this results in is in IE the little 'activeX' confirm drops down, then the 'do you trust this app' comes up, then UAC (vista/w7) and then you get to run through the normal application install process: installer window comes up, confirm, pick install dir. After thats done, your control appears on the page in IE.
The way it used to work in COM was once you did the little activeX confirm drop down (and UAC) the app would just run
Now, the above is only if you need/want it to be .Net 2.0 compatible. If you don't mind only being compatible with 3.0 or higher you can do an XBAP application:
What is Microsoft's roadmap for in browser applications? Silverlight, ClickOnce, ActiveX, dlls
And you can even just take your .Net dll you spent the last 3 weeks learning how to make (frick) and jam it into the WPF application:
How to put a custom windows forms control in a WPF application?
Hope this helps others.
Sam
We deploy AX control in two forms:
CAB file. Installation process as you described in question. You need sign control, pack it into CAB and sign the CAB file. More details you can find here: Packaging ActiveX Controls.
Standalone installer. MSI file for users without admin privileges for manual installation.

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