Silverlight 3.0 out of browser versus WPF/Windows App - Summary of differences?

Question

With the new Silverlight 3.0 feature that allows the components to be hosted outside of the browser, our company is looking for details on the differences between this new feature and WPF Windows applications (since Silverlight is partly a subset of WPF).

Is there a good resource that lists the differences between Silverlight 3 outside of the browser and WPF applications? Areas like permissions, functionality, etc.

If there is no web resources, what are some of the key differences?

Answer 1

Silverlight OOB applications have the exact same capabilities as an in-browser Silverlight application, except they lose their ability to communicate with the DOM (via the System.Windows.Browser API).

Here is a brief list of some common things that you don't have access to with Silverlight that you might be planning on using in a WPF application:

• Client File System
• Client Windows registry
• Client Event Log
• Client OLEDB
• Client SQL Client

This may seem like a long list but it should look fairly familiar to the no-can-do list for any web application platform (a la ASP.NET, JSP, PHP)

Answer 2

Jaime Rodriguez has a very good post covering the key differences and features of both Silverlight and WPF: Here. It's very high level and meant to differentiate between features that a WPF and Silverlight Out-of-Browser application bring to the table.

Answer 3

markti is correct.

Scott Barnes - Rich Platforms Product Manager - Microsoft.