The blog of dlaa.me

With today's release of the Silverlight 1.0 RC and 1.1 Refresh, I've updated the Silverlight samples I own to run on the new bits. Specifically, I've uploaded the migrated source code and recompiled binaries for the team's Silverlight Airlines Demo, my Simple XPS Viewer Demo, and my Silverlight Surface Demo. Because the Silverlight 1.1 Refresh replaces the earlier 1.1 Alpha, the existing source and demo URLs remain the same and simply point to the new content.

The 1.1 Refresh's breaking changes from the 1.1 Alpha build we've all been using before today are documented in the SDK. The migration of the these samples was pretty simple and required very little code change. For the benefit of others migrating Silverlight apps, here are the specific incompatibilities I encountered along with the fix for each:

• Silverlight.js content updated and namespace changed from Sys.Silverlight to Silverlight - use new version of Silverlight.js, change CreateSilverlight.js to use the new namespace, and specify version "1.1" in the call to createObject(Ex)
• Downloader.Open API changed to remove third parameter ("async") because all downloads are now asynchronous - change call sites to pass only two parameters since they were already passing true for async
• Assignment of DoubleAnimation to new Storyboard's Children property now throws an exception - use a Control class and InitializeFromXaml to load the Storyboard and Animation from a XAML resource
• Visibility enum no longer contains .Hidden value - use .Collapsed instead
• OnResize is now function pointer-based instead of string-based - pass function pointer instead

Additionally, a security-related change to the Downloader object now blocks access to file:// URLs. This means that the XPS Viewer and Surface demos will only be able to access their resources (images, files, etc.) when the host page is loaded from a web server. Specifically, loading Default.html from Explorer or by hitting F5 to run the project in Visual Studio will now result in an error message like the following:

Silverlight error message
ErrorCode: 1001
ErrorType: DownloadError
Message: AG_E_UNKNOWN_ERROR

To re-enable debugging for the XPS Viewer and Surface demos, I recommend the following steps which add a web site project to Visual Studio and access the demo page via the included Visual Studio Development Web Server (which uses http:// URLs and works fine). While there are other ways to work around the file:// restriction, I'm suggesting this approach because it automatically references the project files, doesn't require creating additional directories or copies of project files, and doesn't require getting involved with IIS. To enable debugging:

1. From the File menu in Visual Studio 2008, click Open, Project/Solution...
2. Select the .csproj file for the demo you want
3. Click OK
4. From the View menu, click Solution Explorer
5. Right-click the Solution node at the top
6. Click Add, Existing Web Site...
7. Select the same directory the .csproj file is in
8. Click OK
9. Click No when asked to upgrade the web site
10. Right-click the new Web Site Project node
11. Click Property Pages
12. Click Start Options in the left column
13. Check Silverlight in the Debuggers section at the bottom right
14. Click OK
15. Right-click the new Web Site Project node
16. Click Set as StartUp Project
17. Press F5 to Run
18. Click OK to enable debugging in web.config

Okay, enough with the boring details - go get the Silverlight 1.1 Refresh and have some fun with it! :)