Hosting Silverlight as Desktop Applications - I

How often you have seen Silverlight applications getting hosted as Destkop Applications?  Not many times!

Yes, like Flex getting hosted on AIR platform - Silverlight applications can also be hosted on Desktop Applications. 

Note: Remember that Silverlight is a miniature version of WPF - hence a Silverlight Application hosted on Desktop will anyway be of smaller footprint and will have minimal UI richness compared to a WPF desktop application

How to host an existing Silverlight Application on Desktop?

Windows ships in with an executable mshta.exe in C:WindowsSystem32

• Create a Shortcut on Desktop for mshta.exe. Now right click the shortcut and click on Properties
• Change the Target to:
  mshta.exe "C:inetpubwwwrootSilverlightApplicationSilverlightApplicationTestPage.html"
• Now click on OK

The path in RED is the path of the HTML page that hosts the Silverlight Application.

Click on the shortcut to view your Silverlight Application as a Desktop Application. :D