Presentation Follow-Ups

Had a bit of travel last week, with visits to Asheville, NC, Roanoke, VA, and this week California, MD.

Some questions came up during my presentations, as they often do, and as sometimes happens, my answers were occasionally “I don’t know, let me find out.”

So here are the answers to some of those questions:

1. Q. Why do the Prism guidance/libraries use the module name (as a string) rather than a strong type for identifying dependent modules in the module loader?
   
   A. According to one of the folks on the Prism project, using the module name makes for simpler references in config files, and also provides a little decoupling, allowing you have only one place to update the module name.
   
   
2. Q. How does the cross-project linking tool created as part of the Prism guidance determine whether a file should be excluded from a linked project?
   
   A. “The project linker has a set of regular expression filters to determine if a file should be linked that are initially set based on project type (Silverlight vs. non-silverlight).  These are stored in the project file itself (e.g. .csproj).  We currently don't have an editor to edit these filter expression, but you can change them in the project file if you want to adjust them.”
   
   
3. Q. What is the process for updating a Silverlight 3 application that is running out-of-browser (OOB)?
   
   Tim Heuer has a nice explanation of updates for SLooB applications here. Short version is that when you update your application, any app running OOB will get the updated bits automatically. There is not, at this point, a mechanism for allowing users to opt-out of the update, as exists with technologies like ClickOnce.
   

Hopefully these answers will help you evaluate Prism and Silverlight 3, and make more effective use of these tools.