Prism-v2 Reference Implementation migrated to Silverlight 3 with Out-Of-Browser Capabilities

Today I finally decided to blog about the Prism-v2 Silverlight reference implementation using Silverlight 3 Beta.

In this post I will explain the process and some of the modifications I made to the application to use some of Silverlight’s new features and provide the outcoming source code.

So after opening the RI with SL 3 installed the well known migration wizard appeared.

The migration was a pretty straightforward process, and after less than a minute it finally succeeded and was ready for use.

So with Julian, Ezequiel and Matias we started to think which of the new features from Silverlight 3 could be shown working in the Reference Implementation.

After a small talk, our choice was out-of-browser (OOB) functionality.

Implementing Out-Of-Browser (OOB) functionality

For those who have not yet had the chance to read about this Silverlight 3 feature I will provide some links at the end of this article.

To enable OOB, I opened the AppManifest.xml file, and changed its content to the following:

<Deployment xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/client/2007/deployment"
        xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml">
  <Deployment.Parts>
  </Deployment.Parts>
  <Deployment.ApplicationIdentity>
    <ApplicationIdentity
        ShortName="Prism-v2 RI Silverlight 3"
        Title="Prism-v2 Reference Implementation working out of the Browser with Silverlight 3">
      <ApplicationIdentity.Blurb>
        Prism-v2 RI running out of browser in Silverlight 3
      </ApplicationIdentity.Blurb>
    </ApplicationIdentity>
  </Deployment.ApplicationIdentity>
</Deployment>

Having done that, OOB should have been enabled. I ran the application and right clicked to check if this worked correctly. After confirming that I wanted to install the application, the following message was shown:

Ok, the objective was complete. However, that picture is not the one that represents our application the best.I created some images, added them to a folder in the StockTraderRI project (Icons folder). After setting the build action of each image to “Content” and I updated the code in the AppManifest.xml so the icons would be used in the OOB application:

<Deployment xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/client/2007/deployment"
        xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml">
  <Deployment.Parts>
  </Deployment.Parts>
  <Deployment.ApplicationIdentity>
    <ApplicationIdentity
        ShortName="Prism-v2 RI Silverlight 3"
        Title="Prism-v2 Reference Implementation working out of the Browser with Silverlight 3">
      <ApplicationIdentity.Blurb>
        Prism-v2 RI running out of browser in Silverlight 3
      </ApplicationIdentity.Blurb>
      <ApplicationIdentity.Icons>
        <Icon Size="16x16">Icons/icon16.png</Icon>
        <Icon Size="32x32">Icons/icon32.png</Icon>
        <Icon Size="48x48">Icons/icon64.png</Icon>
        <Icon Size="128x128">Icons/icon128.png</Icon>
      </ApplicationIdentity.Icons>
    </ApplicationIdentity>
  </Deployment.ApplicationIdentity>
</Deployment>

After that, the picture changed to show one of the pictures chosen:

After checking both options (there is no need to check any of the options, I just did), the application was launched out of the browser

Source Code

Disclaimer

This code is provided “AS IS” with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Download

You can get source code here: Prism-v2 RI with OOB capabilities.zip.

Final thoughts

For more information about out-of-browser experience you can check:

• OUT-OF-BROWSER EXPERIENCES (video, really recommend it)
• Silverlight 3 Out-of-browser Update Model

Some other posts related to Silverlight 3 and Prism-v2:

• How To: Integrate a Prism v2 application with the Silverlight 3 Navigation Framework
• Commands with Attached Behavior for Silverlight 3 DataForm

I hope this post is useful to you, and your feedback, opinions and thoughts are always welcome to continue improving.

Tags: Composite Application Guidance for WPF & SL, Out-Of-Browser, p&p, Patterns & Practices, Prism-v2, Silverlight, Silverlight 3