Uploading Silverlight 2 Content to Silverlight Streaming

Following on very nicely from my last post on deploying Silverlight content to your own production server, I'm pleased to announce that Silverlight Streaming has added full support for Silverlight 2 applications. As well as adding the basic support, the team have put a lot of work into simplifying the process of uploading and validating your application. Here's a basic walkthrough:

1. Create your Silverlight 2 application using Visual Studio or Expression Blend, do all the usual test / debug steps, etc.
2. Create a manifest file named manifest.xml, that describes how you want the control to be hosted. Here's a simple sample you can use as a template:

   <SilverlightApp>
     <version>2.0</version>
     <source>PopTheBubble.xap</source>
     <width>400</width>
     <height>300</height>
     <background>white</background>
     <isWindowless>false</isWindowless>
   </SilverlightApp>

3. Zip your application .xap and manifest.xml files together into one file.
4. Go to silverlight.live.com and upload the application.
5. You're done! Now you can embed the resulting content in any web page with an iframe or the sample code provided.

As a small example, here's a mini-game called PopTheBubble that you can learn to build by following the Silverlight 2 fundamentals hands-on lab. Click on as many bubbles as you can before the timer runs out - have fun!