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Spying on Silverlight

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The success of Microsoft Silverlight, as seen in the recent Beijing Olympics, shows the capabilities of the technology and is attracting more developers.  The addition of end-users and developers using Silverlight will also drive more tool development and one such useful tool is Silverlight Spy by First Floor.

Silverlight Spy is a free .NET 3.5 tool which allows for detailed inspection of web pages hosting Silverlight 2 content.  This tool uses its own built-in browser which allows users to navigate to any web site and inspect the Silverlight.

The features of Silverlight Spy include:

General

  • Convenient explorer providing access to all application details
  • Extensive search (still in development)

XAP Package

  • View and export XAP package contents
  • View and export assemblies and assembly resources
  • View .NET types and members including statistics
  • Decompile .NET types and members (requires Reflector)

Isolated Storage

  • Explore Isolated Storage structure
  • View and export files in Isolated Storage

Application Style

  • View and export Default Control Styles
  • View and export Application Control Styles

User Interface

  • Explore UI object model with visual feedback in application
  • Find UI elements by selecting them in application
  • Read and write UI element properties
  • View regenerated XAML of (parts of) the UI object model)
  • View UI statistics
  • Preview isolated parts of the User Interface (still in development)
  • Monitor events raised by UI elements

Tools

  • Microsoft Silverlight Configuration
  • Inspect and validate cross-domain access policy files
  • HTTP monitor provides insight in HTTP/HTTPS traffic

Requirements for installing and using Silverlight Spy are minimal:

  • Internet Explorer 6 or higher
  • Silverlight 2 (Beta 2)
  • Windows Installer 3.1
  • .NET Framework 3.5 runtime

Chris Koenig posted a review of Silverlight Spy on his web site.  Chris had good thoughts about the tool:

So far, after just a little bit of use, I really, really dig this tool.  I know a lot of people jumping on the Silverlight development bandwagon and I know this will be a big help to them, both from a debugging as well as a learning experience.  The integration with Reflector puts this tool totally over the top!  I highly recommend you get out to First Floor’s web site Download Silverlight Spy today!

Silverlight Spy can be downloaded from the company's web site which also includes additional information.

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