MIX 2011: Advanced Feature in Silverlight 5

This session was delivered by Nick Kramer, Senior Program Manager from Microsoft.

Topics discussed:

Unrestricted file access

Silverlight 5 trusted apps can access all files. Silverlight 4 trusted apps could only access My Documents and friends.

Access is done using the standard .NET Directory.EnumerateFiles and File.OpenRead

Trusted apps in-browser

In Silverlight 4 only out-of-browser application could be trusted with user consent

In Silverlight 5: in-browser trusted apps with admin consent

Trusted apps can access files, Use P/Invoke, COM Interop, etc.

Group policy

Administrators can set whether a Silverlight 5 application is trusted or not.
The administrator should say which certificates are trusted, same as ClickOnce.

P/Invoke

Allows calling system APIs. This could be done in Silverlight 4 using COM, but at sometimes it can be much robust to do the call directly.

Using P/Invoke is optimized for win32 api and native c++ code.

COM Interop is optimized for COM automation APIs, like office.

Using P/Invoke in Silverlight works the same as in .NET Framework

HTML support

In Silverlight 5, in-browser WebBrowser control is supported.

Multiple windows

In Silverlight 5 you can instantiate a Window class as much as you want, only in out-of=browser applications. Also the restrictions on the window position and title were loosen.

64-bit support

Silverlight 5 can be run in a 64bit process, this means it can now be run under a 64bit browser.

PivotViewer

PivotViewer will be shipped as part of Silverlight 5 SDK.

Main improvements:

- Dynamic client based collections, instead of static pre-generated XML data

- XAML based visuals, instead of bitmaps

- improved customizability

That’s it for now,
Arik Poznanski.