Install Silverlight app out-of-browser with local HTML file browsable using the Webbroser control

Question

Hi,

We developed a SL4 application wich feature also an integrated online help. This help is built as HTML files containing links to each other and shown in the Webbrowser control just within the application. Everything works just perfect when running the app inside the browser.

Now we also need to support out-of-browser. So far no problem with the Webbrowser. We also managed to push the HTML files into the XAP that get's installed on the client if the user chooses to install the app out-of-browser.

But the links within the HTML don't work as the files are within the XAP! :-(

Is there a way to access files stored within the XAP using the webbrowser control. For example a special kind/syntax of URL one can use? Is there a way to install additional files like our HTML files relative to the app in out-of-browser mode so eg. relative links between thouse files work?

By the way: we can not allways access the online help from a central server as the devices are offline that uses this app. Otherwise we could allways show the help from a central documentation server but this is no option here.

Any ideas? Help would be great, thx!

Cheers, Marc

Answer 1

If you can ask the user for elevated permissions so that your application would become trusted, then you can use local file system access to save the html help files on the "My Documents" folder and then open the HTML help from there.

If you will do it this way, it would be better if your html files lived inside a separate XAP file, so that they can be downloaded once, saved and used.