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Silverlight 2 Beta 1 Assemblies and Namespaces – Part 1

Mon, April 14, 2008, 01:03 AM under Silverlight
One of the big things about Silverlight 2 is that it is "just .NET", but in the (cross)browser and cross-platform world. "Just .NET" means that we can use the same programming language (e.g. C# 3.0 or VB9), the same tool (i.e. Visual Studio 2008) and we can expect the same services from a runtime (i.e. the CLR). It also means that the libraries available should have some parity (e.g. compatible subset) with the .NET Framework 3.5 libraries that we are already familiar with. So I thought I'd explore the managed assemblies in Silverlight 2 Beta 1 from a high level.

First we browse to %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft Silverlight\2.0.30226.2\ and there is the full list of what is part of the runtime package that is installed on users' machines when they install the plugin (note the size of each assembly that gives an indication of the number of members in there):


In addition to those assemblies above, currently there are some additional ones that you can choose to reference and deploy with your Silverlight application (i.e. in the XAP). You currently get these when you download the Silverlight SDK:

Notable in the list above are the 3 highlighted assemblies that include controls. I would expect that some of the assemblies currently in the SDK folder would become part of the main list further up. Also note the interesting System.Xml.Linq.dll and all the support for dynamic languages.

In future posts, I will write a paragraph for each one of the assemblies comparing them to their desktop counterparts as applicable.
Comments [4] |#Permalink
Monday, 14 April 2008 02:18:00 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)
Neat idea, and I'm really looking forward for your next detailed posts about those assemblies' content (maybe I'm too lazy to look by myself).

Keep up the good work!
Arnaud
Wednesday, 16 April 2008 04:44:00 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)
Hi Daniel,

I am really looking forward to it, because currently am stuck with this problem - I have a Twitter library built entirely against .NET 3.5 project, and If I try to add this in my Silverlight project, I get an error saying that the library cannot be added as it was not built against Silverlight runtime.I am not sure how to proceed now :(
chakkaradeep
Wednesday, 16 April 2008 15:05:47 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)
Arnaud: Thansk, that's what I am here for ;-)

chakkaradeep: That won't work. The clue is in the first paragraph of this blog post. It is a different framework, with a compatible subset of the API surface. So you must recompile your code in a Silverlight library.
Daniel Moth
Wednesday, 16 April 2008 18:43:00 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)
@Daniel, yes, I have to recompile and now thats real pain, lol, as the framework is not a ditto of the bigger .NET framework and that is making me to write entirely a different set of library for Silverlight alone..I think for now I have to do so. I am not complaining, but just sharing my experience :D
[I know its beta 1 :D]
chakkaradeep
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