Today I was hacking around with a Silverlight application and decided to check if it is possible to recompress its XAP file in order to save some bytes. As you might already know, the XAP files are just renamed ZIP files and you can open and view their contents with almost any archiver. I created a simple batch file that extracts an archive to a temp folder, deletes it and then compresses the extracted files into a new archive with the same name as the original (I am using the open source archiver 7-Zip, which was installed in its default location): @if...

A.k.a Deep Linking in Silverlight Undoubtedly Silverlight offers a myriad of useful features that can enhance the user and development experience – Binding, Multithreading, Layout System, Animations to name a few. But the fact that it is in essence a browser plug-in leads to certain limitations or “hurdles” for the user experience. Deep Linking? Why? One such thing is the lack of Deep Linking, i.e. the browser’s address bar contains the starting page for the application but any change in its state is not reflected in the address. Some people argue that there is difference between Web Applications and Web Pages and while the...

In this blog post i will demonstrate how to customize Scroll Viewer and enable the mouse wheel functionality. I would be using the mix08 controls for  silverlight 2.0. they are  free and with open license. Before start please download Mix08 Controls. 1. Extract them and then open MixControls, after that see generic.xaml file, and open it. Find and copy the ScrollViewer style, it should be something like: .cf { font-family: Courier New; font-size: 10pt; color: black; background: white; } .cl { margin: 0px; } .cln { color: #2b91af; } .cb1 { color: #a31515; } .cb2 { color: blue; } .cb3 { color: red; } .cb4 { color: green; }    <Style x:Key="ScrollBarStyle" TargetType="ScrollBar">           <!-- Any other properties you want to set -->           <Setter Property="Template"> 2. Open your Silverlight project in VS 2008, and go to App.xaml and paste in the <Application.Resources> the style for the scroll viewer....