CODEWITHSUNDEEP
.netsilverlightruntime
NT_
NT_

Reputation: 2670

List of silverlight limitations / restrictions

I have seen and heard of various Silverlight restrictions, e.g. file I/O restrictions, some reflection limitations, restrictions on which languages can be used, printing, resolution, etc.

Could you please compile a list of all major silverlight limitations, as compared to a full-blown .NET application? This is for the latest version (4.0).

I'm not asking for a class reference, but high-level features. It would be nice to propose some workarounds too, if any, but this is not essential.

Many thanks

Upvotes: 10

Views: 3473

Answers (6)

Igor V Savchenko
Igor V Savchenko

Reputation: 1086

Another bunch of restrictions (btw some of these problems you can bypass using out-of-browser (OOB) mode with elevated trust + automation with WScript.Shell):

  1. You can't interact with registry
  2. You can't interact with file system. Only with library folders (like Music, Videos, Pictures)
  3. You can't use DllImport.
  4. You can't use non generic collections from System.Collections namespace.
  5. If you decide to use linux version of Silverlight (Moonlight) then you can't use OOB at all
  6. You can't call services synchronously (only async calls available).
  7. You can't get synchronous response from HttpWebRequest.
  8. Silverlight doesn't implement MD5 hashing. (custom MD5 implementation for Silverlight)
  9. Silverlight doesn't implement RSA encription algorithm (there was nice web site with RSA algorithm implementation for Silverlight. But looks like it is down for now.)
  10. Silverlight doesn't implement Rijndael encription algorithm (for backward compability you may use AES algorithm with block size = 128)
  11. Silverlight doesn't support ASCII/ANSI encodings.
  12. Silverlight doesn't support 3D objects drawing (you may use Kit3D or Balder instead).

But there are some good news. For example you still can use OOB Silverlight for OSX application).

Upvotes: 5

Keith Adler
Keith Adler

Reputation: 21178

  • Printing is actually generated using a bitmap that is 600 DPI; no raster-based text or graphics resulting in jagged content upon close examination
  • No ability to create resizeable child windows, though you can use Tim Heuer's floatable Window as an alternative
  • No ability to use an MDI interface
  • No double-click, though you can use threads with timers to simulate this
  • No support for WPF's IMultiValueConverter, though you can use this as an alternative option
  • No ability to prevent the screensaver from kicking in
  • Mousewheel support varies across platform/browser
  • No support for WS-Trust
  • WCF support is limited to basic http binding

Upvotes: 0

CrazyEnigma
CrazyEnigma

Reputation: 2834

It's more hassle than it's worth. Too many restrictions to count.

Upvotes: -2

PUG
PUG

Reputation: 4472

I dont know if you will find this relavant or not but i used WPF DataGrid and hated it because it had a property that when it was in invalid state it wont exit edit mode and because of that many exception arose.

Upvotes: 0

ChrisF
ChrisF

Reputation: 137158

Unless you are running as a full trust application you don't have access to the local file system. This is a perfectly reasonable restriction for a web application though.

Upvotes: 1

AnthonyWJones
AnthonyWJones

Reputation: 189495

Its probably easier to list what is in Silverlight than what is not. To do that you could look through the Silverlight documentation.

However here are a few links into the documentation which list some the key issues:-

WPF Compatibility
Silverlight Application Security Model
HTTP Communication and Security with Silverlight
URL Access Restrictions in Silverlight
Network Security Access Restrictions in Silverlight

Upvotes: 3

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