Question

1. Does a OOB app built on Silverlight 5 work on a Windows XP machine? I have read that .NET 4.5 apps don’t work on Windows OS-es before Vista, so considering Silverlight 5 is a recent release, just wondering if such apps can run on XP machines.

2. Can a Silverlight OOB app run on Mac OS-es without any additional install? Or does it run at all?

3. If they can be run on Mac OS, is it possible to get OS specific values like common app data path, temp path etc even on Mac OS (or their Mac equivalent)? I would need to store certain files in these paths. Or is Silverlight crippled of getting special folders considering it has to be cross platform?

4. Would a Silverlight app meant to run on desktop (browser or without browser) run on WP7/WP8 phones as well?

I have read a bit on getting started with Silverlight but couldn’t find answers to these specific questions. Thanks..

Answer 1

Silverlight 5 is completely independent of .NET 4.5. In fact Silverlight uses a different, lighter .NET framework to WPF. It shares much of the same syntax but is implemented independently so that it can be independent.

It’s a completely separate download and can run on Windows XP.

Apart from installing the usual Silverlight runtime you need for browser based applications, you don’t need to install anything else to run out of browser applications.

Silverlight uses Isolated Storage to store local data. Access to the host machine is limited for security reasons. Isolated Storage is handled internally and should work identically on Windows and OSX.

As jv42 points out, applications written on Silverlight for browsers (and OOB) wouldn’t work straight on WP or Xbox, they use special versions of Silverlight.