How to Create a Silverlight OOB Installer Wrapper UI Library?

Before starting with the next part of the discussion, let me ask you some questions. Are you a Silverlight developer? If “Yes”, how many times you create a Silverlight Out-of-Browser application? For that, how many times you create an UI and write code to instruct the user to install the application as OOB application. I think the answer will be “Many Times”

To solve this, we will create a Custom UI Wrapper (like the above snapshot) which will have all the codes necessary to guide the user. Once this is done, we don’t have to write the same installation code again and again over the applications. Read through the description and don’t forget to leave your comments and suggestions.

Background

For last couple of months I created so many Silverlight out of browser application where I didn’t add any instruction for the user to install it outside the browser window. Myself faced difficulty creating an UI each time and also write the same code over and over to do it in my demos.

Hence, this time I decided to create a Wrapper Control, which I can use in all of my Silverlight Out-of-Browser applications without doing much design or any code. I found it very useful and decided to share with you, so that, you can also take the same approach in your applications.

Prerequisite

Here is the prerequisite for starting with the project:

Visual Studio 2008 or Visual Studio 2010
Silverlight 3 Tools for Visual Studio 2008 SP1 or Silverlight 4 Tools for Visual Studio 2010
Expression Blend 3 or Expression Blend 4 (for designing)
Remember that, you can develop Silverlight 4 application only in Visual Studio 2010, where as Silverlight 3 is supported in both Visual Studio 2008 SP1 and Visual Studio 2010. I am using Visual Studio 2010 and Silverlight 4 for the demonstration. So, the source code attached here will only run in Silverlight 4 & Visual Studio 2010 environment.

Setting up Project

Once you set up your development environment, create a Silverlight project. If you are new to Silverlight application development and want to know about Silverlight and want to learn how to create a new Silverlight application in-depth, read the Silverlight Tutorial.

Open your Visual Studio 2010 IDE
Select File > New Project or just press CTRL + SHIFT + N to open up the New Project dialog
Expand the “Visual C#” node and then go to sub node “Silverlight”
Select “Silverlight Class Library” from the right pane

Read more: Codeproject

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