C# 4 and .NET 4

1096 ❘ ChaPTer 38 silverliGht
You can use Moonlight to run Silverlight applications on a Linux system. You can
download Moonlight at http://www.gomono.com/moonlight. Check this page for the
current status of supported features with Moonlight.
When you compile a WPF application, you get an executable assembly that contains XAML code in a
binary form, named BAML, as a resource. With a Silverlight application, the compiler creates an XAP fi le
that is a ZIP package containing the assembly and confi guration.
In the .NET Framework for Silverlight, you will fi nd the same classes as in the full .NET Framework but, of
course, not all of them. Some classes are missing and also several methods and properties from classes that
are available with Silverlight.
What ’ s completely unavailable with Silverlight 3 that you have with WPF is support for fl ow and fi xed
documents (see Chapter 37, “ Creating Documents with WPF ” ) and 3 - D (3 - D is covered in Chapter 35,
“ Core WPF ” ). You can simulate 3 - D with 2 - D in Silverlight but, of course, this is completely different from
the 3 - D functionality of WPF. Interoperability to Windows Forms is not available either. In any case, it ’ s
better to write the UI new with XAML instead of integrating Windows Forms controls.
There are also some smaller differences that can be frustrating if you write applications both for WPF and
Silverlight:
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Mouse clicks and events — In Silverlight, the right mouse click is always caught by the browser
and doesn ’ t get to the Silverlight control. That ’ s why there ’ s no right button down/up event. There ’ s
also no double - click event. Silverlight doesn ’ t have events for the mouse wheel. When reading the
properties of RoutedEventArgs , with Silverlight just the properties Handled and OriginalSource
are used. This changes with Silverlight 4 with the right mouse click and mouse wheel support.
Brushes — Silverlight doesn ’ t have the DrawingBrush , VisualBrush , and TileBrush brushes.
However, you have the VideoBrush brush available to add videos to the brush.
Fonts — Because not all the fonts are available on all platforms, Silverlight is limited in the fonts
it offers.
Controls — Silverlight doesn ’ t have Menu , Toolbar , Window , and WebBrowser controls. However,
there are some controls that Silverlight has that are not available with WPF. Over time, these
differences will disappear. Calendar , DatePicker , DataGrid controls fi rst appeared in Silverlight
and are now available with WPF as well. AutoCompleteBox and NumericUpDown are controls that
are currently missing from WPF.
Networking — To avoid blocking the UI thread, only asynchronous calls are available. With
Silverlight 3, you ’ re limited to the BasicHttpBinding and PollingDuplexHttpBinding with WCF.
However, you can also use binary encoding.
File system access — Silverlight 3 applications are not allowed to read and write anywhere
from the client system. You can read and write from isolated storage. IsolatedStorageFile
and IsolatedStorageFileStream are available. Isolated storage is covered in Chapter 29,
“ Manipulating Files and the Registry. ” On a running Silverlight control you can click the right
mouse button to get into the Silverlight menu, where several tabs are available with information and
confi guration options. The Application Storage tab gives information about the applications using
data with isolated storage, and you have control to remove it. You can compare this with cookies of
web applications; just the quotas are very different between cookies and the isolated storage. With
Silverlight 4 more control on the fi le system is available.
Browser integration — Because Silverlight controls typically run within a web browser, integration
with the browser is important. You can defi ne .NET classes that can be called from JavaScript, and
also call into HTML and JavaScript from Silverlight .NET code with classes from the namespace
System.Windows.Browser .
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