Chapter 25. The install experience and preloaders
This chapter covers
- Handling “Silverlight not installed” scenarios
- Creating a custom preloader or splash screen
An often-overlooked aspect of putting a plug-in-based application on the Internet is the experience of a brand-new user. Truthfully, plug-in apps aren’t unique in this. I’ve seen many Windows client applications that depended on registry entries or other files created during normal use but not present at first install. It’s easy to be sloppy about testing that scenario because it’s so far removed from our day-today lives.
Nevertheless, not everyone in the world has Silverlight installed on their machines, and not everyone has your application in their download cache. Anything that gets between your user and using your application is a barrier that will cause attrition. You need to continue to entice users to install the plug-in and wait for your application to download (if it’s large) in order not to lose them.
In this chapter, we’ll first look at how to customize the initial plug-in install and upgrade experience. Then, because some applications can be really large and have lots of assets, we’ll look at approaches for building a custom preloader using XAML and JavaScript.