Search queries to find Silverlight and XBAPs apps

Silverlight and XBAP serve the same purpose, but in different ways.  Both allow for viewing for WPF (XAML) based applications in a browser. Silverlight is a self-contained, cross-browser plugin which supports a subset of the .NET framework, while an XBAP (XAML Browser Application) requires that WPF be installed on the host operating system.

You can get an idea of what people are doing with XBAPs by searching for url's with the .xbap file extension. Microsoft's search.live.com doesn't support .xbap filetype searches yet, but Google does:

http://www.google.com/search?q=filetype:xbap 

It's harder to search for Silverlight applications. While Silverlight applications all contain some common features, such as a javascript reference to agHost.js, search engines don't index the javascript code. The best I can think of is a search for pages which include links to both XAML and JS files:

http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=contains%3Axaml+contains%3Ajs

2 Comments

  • neat idea... however it's hard to filter out the good xbaps from the gibberish ones.

  • Hi KarenExcellent post! Can you please etbloraae in the first workaround?“Install an AllowPartiallyTrustedCallersAttribute’d (APTCA) assembly in to the client’s Global Assembly Cache (GAC). Use this full trust assembly to proxy calls for the XBAP.”I am working with an xbap application in Visual Studio 2008. I installed an APTCA assembly in the client’s GAC like you indicated but when I try to run my code I get the following exception:System.Security.SecurityException: Request for the permission of type System.Security.Permissions.FileIOPermissionThanks in advance

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