Silverlight 4RC threading - can a new Thread return the UI Thread

Question

Hi all,

Let's say I have a situation in Silverlight where there is a background thread (guaranteed to NOT be the UI thread) doing some work and it needs to create a new thread. Something like this:

//running in a background thread
Thread t = new Thread(new ThreadStart(delegate{});
t.Start();

Lets also say that the UI thread at this particular time is just hanging around doing nothing.

Keeping in mind that I am not that knowledgeable about the Silverlight threading model, is there any danger of the new Thread() call giving me the UI thread?

The motivation or what I am trying to achieve is not important - I do not want modification to the existing code. I just want to know if there is a possibility of getting the UI thread back unexpectedly.

Cheers

Answer 1

No, it's not possible. new Thread() is going to be a new thread, regardless of what any other threads are doing.

Answer 2

Good Info, including getting something back to the UI thread, here

Answer 3

OK, So I guess the question may come down to whether it is ever possible for the Silverlight UI thread to be in the thread pool that threads are allocated from when I call "new Thread()".

I have done a fair bit of searching but can't find a definitive answer on how Silverlight threading actually works. (A fair number of opinions exist but they do not always seem to agree).
It would however appear that silverlight is using a thread pool, so calling “new Thread()” may not always create a new thread (you could be allocated an existing one from the pool) depending on how the pool is managed/aged etc.

From some of the blogs I have seen the threading may even be dependant on the browser that the silverlight app is hosted in?