[Mono-dev] Silverlight/Moonlight questions

["Andrés G. Aragoneses [ knocte ]]

2 more questions and we finish! :)

Rolf Bjarne Kvinge escribió:
>> Thanks again Rolf, and Miguel. Now my ideas are much clearer.
>>
>> Just some more: :)
>>
>> Rolf Bjarne Kvinge escribió:
>>>>> Hi,
>>>>>
>>>>>> - As you guys have managed to make widgets for the desktop using
>>>>>> Moonlight, could this be done also with Silverlight?
>>>>> I think so yes.
>>>>> There are Vista gadgets done with Silverlight somewhere.
>>>>>
>>>>>> If yes, how one
>>>>>> could do that from a normal .NET application that could call a
>>>>>> Silverlight widget?
>>>>> I have no idea how the Vista gadgets are made, but one idea is to
>> use
>>>>> the System.Windows.Forms.WebBrowser to embed a browser inside a
>>>> desktop app.
>>>>
>>>> Hugh, but why launching whole browser core just to show a
>> Silverlight
>>>> widget?
>>> Maybe because there's no other way?
>> Well, the other way is calling it as a native library as you just said
>> LunarEclipse is doing, right?
>>
> 
> Just that the native Silverlight API is not public nor documented.

Jikes! Is this likely going to change in the future? Maybe by a new 
managed API that moonlight could mimic? (1.2 version? am I dreaming?)


>>> [...]
>>> Lunareclipse uses pinvokes to call into moonlight, and that part
>> isn't
>>> portable.
>> A pity then. If Moonlight had the same native API as Silverlight, I
>> guess this would be portable (I mean, in Windows LunarEclipse could use
>> Silverlight instead of Moonlight), right?
>>
> 
> As I just mentioned, the native Silverlight API is not public nor
> documented, so this would be difficult.
> 
> 
>>>>>> Or from a .NET application?
>>>>>> I ask this because, as I understand, Silverlight CLR runs in a
>>>> Sandbox and thus it should not allow to write/read from disk, so
>> then how
>>>> can anyone save the contents made by lunareclipse in the home
>> directory
>>>> or whenever on the local computer?
>>>>> It is a .NET application already.
>>>> Then, how this .NET application launches a Silverlight widget?
>>>>
>>> Lunareclipse uses moonlight (which is just a native library) to draw
>> the
>>> xaml in a window. That's all there is to it actually.
>> Is MS Silverlight also a native library like Moonlight? 
> Yes, it is.
> 
>> Doesn't it have
>> a managed API to be consumed by managed programs in order to use it
>> outside of a browser?
>>
> No.

Then, how are Vista Silverlight gadgets developed? Looking at some links 
(for example [1], found by [2]) it seems like they use kind of a 
"silverlight control". Probably I'm missing something (I should hack a 
bit before asking dumb questions sorry...).

[1] 
http://blogs.msdn.com/knom/archive/2007/08/08/silverlight-1-1-updates-on-vista-gadgets.aspx
[2] 
http://www.google.com/search?q=vista+gadget+silverlight&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:es-ES:official&client=firefox-a

Regards,

	Andrés	[ knocte ]

--