Silverlight Spy 3
It has been a while since the latest version of Silverlight Spy was released to the web (72 days ago to be exact). I have been insanely busy doing all sorts of Silverlight consultancy jobs and working on Document Toolkit, but recently I have started working on Silverlight Spy 3 again. In this post I want to share some details on this new version.
First an overview of what has been and then a taste of what is to come.
Silverlight Spy 1.x
Supported Silverlight 1.0 applications and relied heavily on JScript. The initial release was in September 2007. Silverlight Spy v1.x is obsolete and no longer available today.
Silverlight Spy 2.x Beta
Silverlight Spy v2.x supports Silverlight 2 RTW (and as of MIX09 also Silverlight 3 Beta) applications. Silverlight Spy v2.x is a stand-alone ClickOnce application still in Beta today. v2.x Beta is closed source, completely free and comes as-is with no strings attached.
v2.0 Initial Beta release: March 2008
Silverlight Spy 3
In this new version Silverlight Spy gets a major (and with that I mean MAJOR) overhaul. What you can expect:
- A completely redesigned UI for easier access to all aspects of a Silverlight application. The current Windows Forms application is dropped. Various new UI features are simply too hard to implement in the current Windows Forms model.
- Immediate window for debugging, evaluating expressions, execute statements, and so forth.
- Improvements in all areas; enhanced event monitor, an updated XAML writer, property grid supporting both core and custom UI properties, custom attached property support, etc.
- UI Automation pattern invocation
- Support for spying applications running in and out of the browser. No need to fire up the Silverlight Spy standalone application.
- Databinding debugging
- Control Style inspectors
- Extensive use of new Silverlight 3 features
- Standalone setup package with auto-update.
- A new licensing model. Silverlight Spy 3 will be available in a free and a professional version. The professional version provides more features over the free version and comes with a licensing fee. More details on the licensing model will be supplied once the beta is available.
Next to this list there are a number of very exciting features that will be revealed in the near future.
Schedule: the first milestone will be delivered early Q3 2009.
8 Comments
Josh Santangelo said:
Exciting! Count me in for a pro license and as an eager beta tester.
kevin said:
Great. where can I download Spy3?
Koen said:
kevin: slspy 3 is not available yet, scheduled early Q3 2009
juan said:
look forward to slspy3!
WeiTeng said:
Great. where can I download Spy3? Thanks!
Danny said:
Good thinking on going pro! For nothing the suns comes up.
Mahmoud AbdelWareth said:
Will you support the out-of-browser mode in SL 3.0?
Koen said:
Yes, out-of-browser support is being considered