Silverlight Knowledge Base

The background Parameter

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This sets the color of the Silverlight application's background. This color will be visible only if you set the windowless parameter to true as explained in the next section.

The background parameter is a XAML color, not an HTML color. It means that you can also set the Alpha channel, as we saw in Chapter 5.

In addition to these generated parameters, you can create additional ones as discussed in the following sections.

The windowless Parameter This parameter is tricky. To keep it simple, let's say that if windowless is false, even if you set the background color of your XAML page to Transparent, you will not see what is underneath the Silverlight plug-in. We say that the plug-in is "windowed." On the other hand, if windowless is true, the plug-in is

NOTE

When the Silverlight 2 application is compiled, all the files needed are automatically packed into a .xap file. This file is just a Zip file containing the assemblies with the compiled .NET code, the XAML pages and controls, and other "resource" files such as images, videos, and so on. We will talk more about the XAP file a little later in this chapter and in this book. The source parameter can also point to a XAML page, for example for Siverlight 1 applications. v_/

CAUTION

Even though the default value for windowless is false, you often want to set this parameter to true to enable a nicer, more elegant integration with the web page. However, this comes at a performance cost that should be taken in account if your application is resource-intensive.

On Macintosh computers, the windowless parameter has no effect; it is always true.

Understanding the object Tag 111

integrated with the HTML markup, and you can even place HTML elements on top of the Silverlight scene.