Download "Xap" Packages on Demand in Silverlight

Introduction

This article introduces a method to download and use "xap" packages on demand in Silverlight.

Background

To run a Silverlight application, browsers need to download the "xap" packages generated by the Silverlight projects. When developing a Silverlight application, developers can put all the "User Controls" and other resources in a single "xap" package. They can also choose to put these resources into separate "xap" packages and let the browsers to download them as needed. In many cases, putting the resources into a single "xap" file should be the correct choice. But separating the resources into different "xap" files can potentially provide some advantages in some other cases:

The browsers can download only the Silverlight contents needed by the application in real time, which may potentially save the download time and improve the user experience.
If some parts of the Silverlight application are changed, we can choose to redeploy only the "xap" packages affected by the changes.
This article introduces a method to download and use "xap" packages on demand in Silverlight with a Visual Studio example. The Visual Studio solution comes with this article is developed in Visual Studio 2010 and Silverlight 4. This article assumes the readers having some basic experiences with Silverlight development. If you are new to Silverlight, Scott Guthrie's blog is the default place for you to get started.

Read more: Codeproject

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