Is there an in-place installation for Silverlight 2 so that the user does not have to download->install->restart browser?

If so, what's the right way of getting it to work? Can I use the <asp:Silverlight> control? I tried subclassing this control and adding the "inplaceInstallPrompt" property but couldn't get it to change its behavior.

If not, what's the plan on having one? The default "Get Microsoft Silverlight" obviously isn't going to work. 

Thanks, Russ.

raulgspan:

Is there an in-place installation for Silverlight 2 so that the user does not have to download->install->restart browser?

You can probably download the SL 2 .exe from this link. You can install and will work without restarting the browser if you didn't open your browser before-hand. :)

raulgspan:

Can I use the <asp:Silverlight> control?

Silverlight.exe (SL2 runtime)  is for viewing the SL content in your browser. Like Flash player. it's nothing about coding or development.

If you want to use asp:Silverlight control, you will need to install ASP.NET 3.5 extension. And also, if you want to develop SL project, you will need VS 2008, SL2 Tool for VS 2008, Blend 2.5.

you may try one thing. Uninstall Flash Player from your machine. and visit to flash website or youtube. See what you will get.. you will probably get the "install flash or download flash player"  or similar to this.

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Best Regards,
Michael Sync

Blog : http://michaelsync.net
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I think you misunderstood my original post. I'm a developer. I'm building a commercial Silverlight 2 application. I don't want my end-users without the Silverlight 2 plugin to get the default "Get Microsoft Silverlight" image and install experience. I want them to have the "in place installation" as was available in Silverlight 1; this type of installation occurs without a separate .exe download and is a much smoother end-user experience. Does what I was asking make more sense now? Thanks--

Hello,  

AFAIK, we can't specify inplaceInstallPrompt in asp:Silverlight control. Actually, it should have this property since asp:Silverlight control is using "Sys.UI.Silverlight.Control.createObject" . maybe, MS hasn't implemented inplaceInstallPrompt as a public property in asp:Silverlight control.

However, there is Silverlight.js in C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Silverlight\v2.0\Tools. You can use that js file instead of asp:Silverlight control. then, you can specify  inplaceInstallPrompt increateObject().

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Best Regards,
Michael Sync

Blog : http://michaelsync.net
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Hi -- just tried this as well, to no avail. Looks like there is no in place installation for silverlight 2 yet. Can someone from Microsoft confirm/explain this and let us know when this is expected to be available or what workaround we can use in the meantime? Thanks--

If you are running Firefox you will be required to restart the browser for the foreseeable future because Firefox caches its plugins at startup. IE should only require restarting the browser on upgrades (because it caches the location of files against class ids).

edit:
I may have misunderstood. Installing Silverlight 1 required downloading an executable, running it and (maybe) restarting browser. When you say in place do you mean not redirecting the page to the download center?

Hello Daniel, 

Daniel Harvey:

I may have misunderstood. Installing Silverlight 1 required downloading an executable, running it and (maybe) restarting browser. When you say in place do you mean not redirecting the page to the download center?

Please take a look this post. http://blogs.msdn.com/webnext/archive/2007/05/08/silverlight-install-modes.aspx 

I think it should work with Silverlight.js from SL 2 as well. but  Russ said that he tried already and found that it doesn't work.

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Best Regards,
Michael Sync

Blog : http://michaelsync.net
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The direct/indirect installation experiences in Silverlight 2 are different from those in Silverlight 1.0. However, I think that you will find the new experience to be better both for developers and for end-users. Let me start by summarizing the 1.0 experiences.

 Indirect Installation
The 1.0 indirect installation experience presented a button which read "Get Microsoft Silverlight". Clicking this button redirected the user to http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/install.aspx. There, the user was presented with the Silverlight licensing text and was given a button which started the download of Silverlight.exe. Once installation was complete, the user had to navigate back to the page that initiated the installation process.

Direct Installation
The 1.0 direct installation experience presented the same button as Indirect Installation but also added the Silverlight licensing text beneath the button. This changed the visual appearance of the installation prompt to that in mchlSync's last post. When the user clicked the "Get Microsoft Silverlight" button they were redirected to Silverlight.exe directly, in the context of their current page. This experience allowed website owners to control the installation experience on their own web page, but it required additional screen real estate for displaying the licensing text.

Browser Restarts
Both of these models had the same requirements for avoiding a browser restart when installation was completed. Namely, the user had to be on Windows IE and they must not have had a previous version of Silverlight installed. If either of these criteria were not met then a browser restart was required.

Silverlight 2 Experience
In Silverlight 2 Beta 1 we merged the two 1.0 installation experiences into a single experience. We created a simple installation image which is small and easy to understand, similar to the 1.0 Indirect image:

However, clicking on the image has the behavior of the 1.0 Direct experience. The installer download occurs directly on the page which presents the image without redirection to Microsoft.com. The licensing text is presented to the user as part of that installation experience instead of on the web page.

 If the user is on IE and did not previously install Silverlight then a page refresh is sufficient for instantiating the control. In fact, you can simply call Silverlight.createObject(...); again to accomplish instantiation without a refresh. If the user is not using Windows IE or has a previous Silverlight runtime installed then they will have to restart their browser, just like in 1.0.

If you want to try the new merged direct/indirect installation experience then just click the 'Install Silverlight' image above. It uses HTML which is very similar to that which Silverlight.js generates for Silverlight 2 Beta 1!

 Piotr

Piotr Puszkiewicz
Program Manager
Microsoft Silverlight

Hi Piotr -- Thanks very much for this detailed response. My fundamental problem with this approach is that this is a horrible end-user install experience: a run/save dialog is simply not friendly enough to the average user, to whom running an ".exe", regardless of the fact that is comes from Microsoft.com, is a scary experience. This will be a significant deterrent to proliferation of the plug-in, and I urge you to consider a solution more inline with that of installing Flash in IE. If you compare this experience to that of installing Flash, we're talking night and day.

PiotrP:

 If the user is on IE and did not previously install Silverlight then a page refresh is sufficient for instantiating the control. In fact, you can simply call Silverlight.createObject(...); again to accomplish instantiation without a refresh. If the user is not using Windows IE or has a previous Silverlight runtime installed then they will have to restart their browser, just like in 1.0.

No restarting the browser? That's sooo cool.  

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Best Regards,
Michael Sync

Blog : http://michaelsync.net
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raulgspan, one thing to note is that Flash actually doesn't have any better of an install experience than SL (IF an older version of Flash is not installed). It too requires the user to download and run an exe. In fact, I think the Flash install is slightly worse in terms of number of clicks required.

Also, It's been eluded that SL1 will automatically update itself to SL2 once released if you hit a page with SL2 content and SL1 is installed and auto-updates are on (which is the default). So, this too sounds superior to the Flash upgrade process (which requires the user to say "yes").

So, a fresh SL install is better than a fresh Flash install and a SL upgrade is better than a Flash upgrade BUT...

Most users have an old version of flash so what ends up being compared is a fresh SL install vs. a Flash upgrade ...which Flash easily takes home the prize on.

I'm hoping MS will push SL out everyway it can to help eliminate the perceived gap between the typical flash and SL install experience. Hopefully they'll include SL with IE8, Windows Update, Windows 7...etc. Can anyone from MS comment on plans to deploy besides relying on ISVs like myself to do that job? I agree with raulgspan that a fresh SL install (like a fresh Flash install) is a far cry from a simple experience for the novice user.

I've recently added a blog post which shows an example of using Silverlight without restarting the browser. The example works across IE, Firefox, and Safari. You can find it here:

http://blogs.msdn.com/piotrp/archive/2008/05/02/automatically-start-silverlight-on-install.aspx

Piotr Puszkiewicz
Program Manager
Microsoft Silverlight

Oh. good.. I also posted about that in my blog last month (May 15)  (yes. based on your reply.  )  I faced one problem with internet download manager when I open "HardRock cafe" site :(  not sure what "Item_2.bin" is.

You are using Silverlight.js in your example. but jamlew from your company said that we should stick to <object> tag or asp:Silverlight.

There are indeed a couple ways to initialize Silverlight objects, but if possible it's better to stick to the <object> tag (or the <asp:Silverlight> control) for Silverlight 2.  The .js file changes periodically, which means to keep up to date you would have to re-deploy the file each time it was modified.  Also, it doesn't always function the same depending on the client browser (especially for unsupported browsers).

(If this has answered your question, please click on "Mark as Answer" on this post. Thank you!)

Best Regards,
Michael Sync

Blog : http://michaelsync.net
Feed : http://michaelsync.net/feed

I'm actually not familiar with Item_2.bin either.

 I used Silverlight.js in my sample as a simplification. I needed a javascript method to call which would tell me whether or not Silverlight is installed, and I didn't want to add that complexity to the post. However, I see how this can cause confusion and so I will add another post which shows how to use this model without Silverlight.js.

 Thanks for the feedback!

Piotr Puszkiewicz
Program Manager
Microsoft Silverlight

Microsoft should build an in-place FLASH installer for silverlight so that we get the nice install experience for silverlight, if you already have flash!