First Floor Software

Silverlight 3 and Silverlight Spy

I am happy to announce that the current version of Silverlight Spy works smoothly with Silverlight 3 applications. Of course the Spy is unaware of all the new features of SL3 and won't tell you anything about merged resource dictionaries, 3D effects, etc. Silverlight 3 applications are currently detected as Silverlight 2 application.

I won't be able to squeeze out a new version of Silverlight Spy here in Vegas, but will do so as soon as possible when I am back home. The new features of SL3 are of high interest to Silverlight Spy as well, a couple of things I thought of when attending the key note and Joe Stegman's session;

• Employ the Perspective 3D transform to visualize UI layers in 3D
• Silverlight Spy currently relies on the HTML bridge for communication between the Silverlight and .NET host appdomains, the LocalConnection API may provide an interesting alternative
• Make application screenshots using WriteableBitmap
• Being able to receive routed events that have been handled is very good news, the event monitor is now able to list all raised events.
• Silverlight Spy should be capable of spying on SL applications that run outside the browser. I need to investigate what's possible here.
• And there's probably more that I haven't thought of yet

In short, many of the exciting new SL3 features will find their way eventually into Silverlight Spy one way or the other. Stay tuned.