New Silverlight version - trouble : automatically update in OOB mode

Question

Hi,

I hava a signed XAP (Silverlight version 4.0.50401.0) installed with elevated trust in OOB.

Each new version of XAP was successful installed in OOB mode (automatically download and ...) - all work as expected.

Now I installed latest silverlight development stuff (now I have Silverlight 4.0.50917.0).

All my clients who run my app in browser - require to update their silverlight runtime - all work as expected - nice silverlight update dialog, install new silverlight runtime, etc.

Problem with my OOB installed clients - they silence ignore this new version of XAP.

Why after I update my silverlight development stack does the OOB auto-update facility stop working and why doesn't an OOB installation have a mechanism for checking and updating the silverlight runtime version? Maybe one exists and I don't know.

Thank you.

Any suggestions are welcome.

Have a nice day

Answer 1

Silverlight actually throws an PlatformNotSupportedException exception if the update requires a newer version of Silverlight so you should catch and handle that to alert the user to download a new version.

If an application update is available, but uses a newer version of Silverlight that the user has not yet installed, the update will not be downloaded. This also occurs if an update changes the application to require elevated trust. In both cases, the UpdateAvailable property value is false, and the Error property value is an Exception instance. With a Silverlight version change, the exception is a PlatformNotSupportedException instance. With a security change, the exception is a SecurityException instance. When this happens, you can alert the user to open the application's host Web site, triggering your HTML-based Silverlight upgrade experience.

Out of Browser Support on MSDN: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd550721(v=VS.95).aspx