Testing the Application in C#.NET

Creator ECC200 in C#.NET Testing the Application

If you compile and run the project, you will see the completed Silverlight example. The data is loaded from the database, via the ASP.NET server, and delivered to Silverlight seamlessly. When the user selects a value using the ComboBox control, the data is filtered so that only matching data is displayed, as shown in Figure 35-24.

A very nice feature of Silverlight is that your users can install and run your Silverlight clients outside the browser. In this section, I ll show you how to enable this support and demonstrate how it appears to the user. As the foundation, we ll use the Silverlight swimming calculator that we created at the start of the chapter.

Load the SwimCalculator project into Visual Studio. Right-click the project in the Solution Explorer, and open the project properties by selecting Properties from the pop-up menu. On the Silverlight tab, select the Enabling running application out of the browser box, as shown in Figure 35-25.

Figure 35-25. Enabling Silverlight out-of-browser support If you click the Out-of-Browser Settings button, you can configure some options for how your program will be run, as shown in Figure 35-25.

Figure 35-26. The Out-Of-Browser Settings dialog box The meaning of each option is self-evident. You need not make any changes to these options. I tend to set at least the Width and Height options to match the size of my XAML design surface. An 800 by 600 window is the default if you don t specify a size. Click OK to close the dialog box and then recompile your project.

If you select Start Without Debugging from the Visual Studio Debug menu, you will see that the Silverlight application appears in its own window, as shown in Figure 35-27.

Figure 35-27. The out-of-browser calculator application The user won t be able to use Visual Studio to start the application, so to understand the process from their perspective, right-click the SwimCalculatorTestPage.aspx file in the SwimCalculator.Web project, and select View in Browser from the pop-up menu. This will load the Silverlight application into the browser, much as we saw when we created a regular Silverlight application. The difference is that the user can now install our swim calculator as a local application. A pop-up menu will appear if you right-click the Silverlight application in the browser, as shown by Figure 35-28.

When you user selects the Install menu item, a dialog box appears to confirm the installation, as shown in Figure 35-29. If the user clicks OK, then the application is installed locally and started.

Figure 35-29. The Silverlight local installer The user doesn t have to install the application to use it. They can continue to use it in the web page, but if they do install it, then there will be a regular icon in the Start menu or on the desktop that they can use to launch your program without needing the browser at all. To uninstall your application, the user right-clicks and selects the Remove this application menu, as shown in Figure 35-30.

You don t have to rely on the user knowing to right-click to install your application. You can provide support for the user to install your application as part of your program. To demonstrate this, I have added a Button to the swim calculator layout, as shown by Figure 35-31.

Figure 35-31. The modified swim calculator layout I realize that this is not the most elegant of additions, but it will serve our purposes. The name given to the new Button control in the layout is installButton, and Listing 35-4 demonstrates the additions to the code-behind required to support it. I have omitted the convertButton Click method for brevity, but it is unchanged from Listing 35-2. Listing 35-4. Adding Installation Support using System.Text; using System.Windows; using System.Windows.Controls; namespace SwimCalculator { public partial class MainPage : UserControl { public MainPage() { InitializeComponent(); } private void convertButton Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) { // method body removed for brevity } private void UserControl Loaded(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) { if (Application.Current.IsRunningOutOfBrowser) { installButton.Visibility = System.Windows.Visibility.Collapsed; convertButton.SetValue(Grid.RowSpanProperty, 2); } else { // set the inital state of the install button setButtonState(); // register a handler for the event invoked when the install state changes Application.Current.InstallStateChanged += (innerSender, eventArgs) => { setButtonState(); }; } }