Silverlight Multitargeting Support in Visual Studio 2010
Hi, my name is Adam, and I am a betaholic. Seriously, if Microsoft puts new CTP’s, betas, or RC’s out there, I’m going to install it. I can’t help it. So when Microsoft released the first beta of Visual Studio 2010 to MSDN subscribers yesterday (look for a public release later this week), it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the first thing I did when I got home was to install it on my Windows 7 RC machine and take it for a test drive.
I hadn’t really planned on writing any type of review of the beta, but when I saw this:
I just couldn’t help it. That’s right what you see above is the ability to select which version of the Silverlight runtime I want my new Silverlight app to target when creating the app. Additionally, I can go into the app’s property pages after it has been created and changed the targted runtime:
Previously I had been using Amy Dullard’s and Shawn Wildermuth’sscripts to flip back and forth between Silverlight 2 and Silverlight 3 development. These scripts do the job, but it’s not a quick 2 second change. You have to wait one runtime and set of tools to uninstall and another runtime and set of tools to install.
One of the things I did notice is that when working with a Silverlight 3 app in Visual Studio 2010, none of the Silverlight 3 control were in the toolbox. I was a bit confused at first, but I simply right-clicked on the toolbox, selected choose items, and naivgated to the Silverlight tab:
From there it was just a matter of selecting the Silverlight components and going off to the races.
(P.S. - I haven’t forgotten or abandonded the Silverlight Browser project. I’ve been a bit swamped with work for the past couple of weeks, and haven’t had much time to dedicate to the project. However, I am wrapping up a new release, in VS2010 of course, and hope to have it published at the end of the week/beginning of next week.)
