Professional C# 4 and .NET 4

Chapter 38. Silverlight

WHAT'S IN THIS CHAPTER?

• Differences between WPF and Silverlight

• Creating Silverlight projects

• Navigation between pages

• Networking with System.Net, WCF, and data services

• Integration with the browser

In the last few chapters, you've read about creating WPF applications. Silverlight is a subset of WPF and offers applications running in a web browser. Since version 3.0, the applications can also run in a standalone fashion. The advantage of Silverlight is that you don't have to run it on a Windows operating system; it is also available on other platforms. All that's needed is an add-in in the browser that includes the Silverlight runtime. The Silverlight runtime contains a subset of the .NET Framework and a subset of WPF.

Before going through this chapter, you should be knowledgeable about XAML and WPF, as discussed in Chapters 27 and 35.

COMPARING WPF AND SILVERLIGHT

Silverlight and WPF are similar in many aspects, but there are also important differences. Silverlight consists of a core presentation framework (a subset of WPF), the .NET Framework for Silverlight (a subset of the .NET Framework), and installers and updaters. WPF applications run on a Windows system and require at least the .NET Client Profile. Silverlight uses a plugin model and is hosted in a web browser.

Silverlight is available for use with a wide range of browsers and operating systems. Beside Internet Explorer, Silverlight can also be used in Firefox, Safari, Opera, and Google Chrome. Not all of ...