Using ActiveX with Silverlight

Question

I would really like to use Silverlight for a project I'm working on but I will need to interact with an application running on the user's desktop. Is it possible to do this with Silverlight, or am I stuck with ASP.NET + ActiveX?

Answer 1

Silverlight applications run in a sandbox on the client and cannot communicate outside except through sockets or ports. You'll probably have to go ActiveX.

Answer 2

You can use Silverlight as an ActiveX component in a standard windows application... See alternate hosting: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/silverlightalthost

If you have to do this via a Web application, you could write a custom signed ActiveX component and interact with it from Silverlight (via JS bridge)