In Browser vs Out of the Browser Nithin Mohan T K nithinmohantk@i-dreamz.org DreamWorkz Technologies http://www.i-dreamz.org

Simple Comparison – Part 1

Simple Comparison – Part 2

Simple Comparison – Part 3

Questions?

Updates Silverlight comes with a nice out of the browser experience. So how can we handle updates, if there is an update for the application. Simple Silverlight provides us a nice API functions to check for the updates. Such as Invoke updates on click of a button or check for updates on Application startup

Updates on Application Startup Open App.xaml file which has application level settings and events On Application_Startup event We need to call the following method this.CheckAndDownloadUpdateAsync(); This Asynchronous function will look for the updates, on the hosted site from where you have installed the Silverlight application on desktop

Updates on Application Startup No this is not enough.

Actually this method makes an asynchronous call and downloads the latest update and updates to the current install location. Note that the current executing application is not yet reflected by the update, we need to restart the application to start using new version. Here comes the magic of Silverlight But how do we get notified when update is finished and we can notify the user that a new update is available and he need to restart the application to use the latest application. In the program we need to attach an Event Handler for CheckAndDownloadUpdateCompleted see the code snippet

This program notifies the user about the status of the update. Go through the screen shots in next steps

No updates found

Updates found and downloaded After the restart, application will be updated and you can see changes reflected.

Few Points……. Pretty good right, that is the benefit of Rich Internet Applications(RIA), we can push updates from our hosted site. Application does look for an update on each launch. The sample code I shown is checking for updates on application start up.

Few Points……. Just look through a scenario we need to look for an update only when, user initiates it. Just like clicking on an Update button. Yes, it is possible. You have to call this.CheckAndDownloadUpdateAsync(); on the click event of the UPDATE button and put an Event Handler to notify about the update. Just like we have done in App.xaml

You could even add some kind of a Background update checker which periodically checks for an Update and notify us about the update. This is just a beginning more yet to come………… ……………………….. Before 2012….. Just being funny..

Questions?