Silverlight stack installation
I've actually got some real work to do, but ended up doing this instead which turned out to be way more fun. First off I decided to install the prerequisite stack required to start messing around with Silverlight 1.1.
You need:
Microsoft Silverlight 1.1 Alpha.
Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2.
Microsoft Silverlight Tools Alpha for Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2.
Actually, it tells you what you need to install here with some provisos (see below). I started by installing the Silverlight 1.1 Alpha bits only to be told that I already had it? Did I? I don't remember installing it - better check. Umm, how do I check? A quick Live Search revealed some useful forums that showed that I needed to poke around in my registry to figure out what version of the plug-in I already had, so Start -> Run -> regedit and then drill down to the following Registry key to see the value:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Silverlight\Version
The 1.0 Beta will show up as 0.90.20416.10 and the 1.1 Alpha will be 0.95.20416.10
Okay, so it turned out that I had the 1.1 version installed. All good.
I then went and installed Visual Studio C# Express. So the first caveat is that the Microsoft Silverlight Tools Alpha for VS2008 B2 requires at least VS2008 Standard (I ended up using Pro) edition in order to work. Don't waste time as I did installing Express and only find out when you try to install the Silverlight add-ins on top (it fails obviously). This info is buried elsewhere in the online docs.
Finally, once I'd figured this bit out, the installation of the Silverlight Tools plug-in was smooth and quick.
