Silverlight Lessons Learned

After a shotgun week of Silverlight 2.0, I thought I would share a few lessons learned.

Blank page

If you get a blank page after uploading your xap file, make sure that NETWORK SERVICE is in the security accounts.

XAP File

XAP is the only file that needs to be moved typically. As you do your code updates, just move the XAP file into place.

Dynamic XAML

Dynamic XAML requires a namespace attribute now:

<Grid xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/client/2007">

Timing Issues

There seems to be a timing issue in Silverlight that is causing an event to get triggered before the data streams down from a site. This still requires investigation.

Visual Studio 2008 and Silverlight Debugging

For some reason, if a serious Silverlight error occurs, debugging will be disabled in the web application. This may make it seem like events are not firing when they are, just that the debugger is broken. Right-click properties on the web application --> Start Options --> Debuggers --> Check Silverlight

Overall

Overall, I love XAML and Silverlight. It was absolutely incredible to work with but it took a lot of time due to minimla information on the web right now. Hopefully, this post will help some other folks out.