Minimize .xap file size

[Michael]

We will explore the telerik controls for Silverlight, but I would like to know if they can individually be used/ deployed "as needed"?    We want the smallest .xap as possible (to avoid the daily download time). 
 
Your total offering might be quite large (as one .xap).  Could you allow us access to individual controls?

Thank you.

[Valentin.Stoychev]

Hello Michael,

Currently all controls are shipped in one assembly for easy deployment.

We have internal discussions about separating the controls into a couple of dll files. For the moment we have come to the following list (still not final though) for separating the assemblies:
 - navigation controls (menu, treeview, etc)
 - input controls ( combobox, upload ...)
 - data controls (grid)
 - core
 - themes in separate assemblies

What is your scenario? Do you have something like a max xap file size limitation? What do you think on this separation? Or do you think if each and every control will be good in its own assembly?

Thanks for the feedback!

Greetings,
Valentin.Stoychev
the Telerik team

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[Michael]

Yes, your breakdown does look good.
Ideally, each control would be individually selected/ included. 
The .xap file is going to be too large on many Silvelight projects - until Microsoft (or someone) comes up with some intelligence behind them..
(I.e. the DLLs should be checked for date and only updated if the version control warrants - reducing the download time after first use).
 
-Michael

[Valentin.Stoychev]

Hello Michael,

I've just blogged about the change in our plans for separation of controls in different assemblies:
http://blogs.telerik.com//ValentinStoychev/Posts/08-07-07/Optimizing_the_load_size_of_Telerik_Silverlight_controls.aspx?ReturnURL=%2fValentinStoychev%2fPosts%2f

Let us know if you have any feedback on this.

Best wishes,
Valentin.Stoychev
the Telerik team

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[Ben Hayat]

Valentin, your new decision to break it down, is a very good decision, Stay away from one huge dll. You'll find many developers that will use several dlls from different vendors and they want their "selected" dll to be small.

[Fergus]

Yes i agree with searating the dlls but i think that they should be separated even more.
I have a silverlight app with just the coverflow control but i have to upload the telerik.windows.control and the telerik.windows.navigation dlls bringing the size over 700Kb which can take a lot of time on slow connections.

[Valeri Hristov]

Hello Fergus,

I agree that some specific-purpose controls should be in separate assemblies and most probably RadCoverFlow is one of them. We are in the middle of the discussions about our road map, and we are considering rearrangements of the controls in the assemblies because they are quickly becoming bigger and bigger. Since this will be a major breaking change, most probably we will introduce such rearrangements in Q1 2009 which is due in the end of February.

I am just curious, what are your expectations about the size of the assemblies of your application, without the third party controls? I still think that additional 300-400kB from 3rd party assemblies (compressed) in 1-2MB XAP is not that much, since the application will be downloaded only once and the user will have to wait only the first time he visits the site.

Best wishes,

Valeri Hristov
the Telerik team

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