Pro Business Applications with Silverlight 5

Running Silverlight Applications Out of the Browser

Initially, Silverlight was designed to run inside a browser window, either as a widget on a web page or filling the whole browser window as an application. However, Silverlight 3 introduced a major new feature that enabled Silverlight applications to be installed locally on the user's machine. The process of installing a Silverlight application places the .xap file in a permanent location within the user's profile (that is, outside of the user's browser cache) and creates shortcuts on the user's desktop and/or start menu to enable them to run it locally. When the user clicks or double-clicks the shortcut, the application opens in its own window as if it were a standard, native application. This ...