HowTo: Use Silverlight-enabled website in Microsoft Edge Chromium

Let’s see how we can use a Silverlight-enabled website in Microsoft Edge Chromium

1) When we visit the site we’ll see a “Click now to install” button that used to download and install Silverlight, but that recently stopped working. Even before though, it wouldn’t work with Edge Chromium after installation, but show everytime the same download prompt

2) Press “…” button at top-right and select “Settings”

3) Pick Appearance at the left sidebar and scroll down on the right to “Internet Explrorer mode button”. If the switch to turn it on is disabled (grayed out), then press the link “allow sites to be reloaded in Internet Explorer mode”

4) This will take you to edge://settings/defaultBrowser, where you should change “Allow sites to be reloaded in Internet Explorer mode” from “Default” to “Allow”. After that press the “Restart” button shown.

5) Now if you go back to Appearance, you can turn on the “Internet Explorer mode button” option

6) Now if you go back to the website, you’ll see a button at top-right allowing you to open the page in Internet Explorer mode. The same action is also available on the “…” menu, but having it as a button too can prove handy.

7) If Microsoft hadn’t broken the direct Silverlight download links, then from this point you would be set and could use the respective website by first installing the Silverlight ActiveX control. But instead you’ll get:

8) Luckily archive.org has cached the last Silverlight releases (you can also check them on virustotal.com after downloading if you wish) and hope they will keep them, since they’re the most trustworthy alternative source for those installers (after Microsoft of course). Ignore the “Developer” versions and just get the x86 (Silverlight.exe) or x64 (Silverlight_x64.exe) version, depending on your Windows installation

9) Since they keep various versions archived, make sure you get the latest available one from there.

10) After the download completes you will be able to run the downloaded installer

11) When the installer starts, uncheck the options “Make Bing my search engine” and “Make MSN my homepage” if you don’t wish to do those actions. Then press Install now and after it downloads and installs, select “Enable Microsoft Update” (as recommended) and press Next and then Close.

12) Now if you visit the Silverlight-based website again you will see the Download Silverlight prompt, but if you press the “IE mode” button on the Edge toolbar (or do the same action from the “…” menu), you’ll see the Silverlight application loading (could show some loading progress animation there or some percentage – depends on the application).

13) You will see a popup open up where you can select that Edge should remember the current url and open it in Internet Explorer mode next time too (if you press Manage on that popup you can see those sites which are remembered for 30 days). Those sites can be managed at edge://settings/defaultBrowser

14) after that the website opens up in Internet Explorer mode with a small warning bar at the top that you can close with the [x] button on its right

15) And presto, you can see below ClipFlair Studio (http://studio.clipflair.net) working fine in Microsoft Edge Chromium via Internet Explorer mode and the Silverlight ActiveX Control.

Wish Microsoft wouldn’t make lives of users that hard. Not all sites are backed by multi-million dollar companies to be rewritten from scratch with HTML-based technology that still strives to support what Silverlight was offering with ease (btw, if you’d care to sponsor Clipflair Studio’s future evolutions, can donate via the respective button at https://github.com/zoomicon/clipflair)

In the case of ClipFlair, you’ll need to do the final steps of this process for these URLs:

http://studio.clipflair.net

http://gallery.clipflair.net/activity

http://gallery.clipflair.net/video

http://gallery.clipflair.net/photo

Fix: Windows 10 laptops with AMD graphics adapter going really slow

Quoting my comment from a discussion thread on the AMD Community website

Actually the drivers back from 2015 that Microsoft serves for AMD laptop graphics adapters seem to make Windows 10 crawl (at everything, not just in graphics stuff). Installing the newest ones from AMD (in this case the beta driver) makes laptops work decently again.

This doesn’t occur only with the legacy adapters like HD 7310, but also with a bit newer supported adapters like AMD Radeon HD 8600M (have one combined with Intel HD on a Dell Inspiron laptop)

Also note that at every Windows 10 feature upgrade, it seems to replace the newer driver with that older one and then you have to replace it with the newer one again (assuming you had the newer installed before, can do it by right clicking Start menu, selecting to see Device Manager, opening display adapters, right clicking the AMD adapter and selecting Update Driver, then selecting to use one on the computer and then select to pick from list and choose the one with the newest release date or the one with bigger version [those two don’t always seem to be "matching"])

This thing makes both Microsoft and AMD look very bad and wonder when they’ll realize it

So if you have a graphics adapter like AMD Radeon HD 7310 grab the Radeon Software Crimson Edition Beta that contains a beta driver from 2016 (don’t get the WHQL one that comes with the older Catalyst Software Suite or the old one coming from Windows Update) from the AMD legacy drivers page:

https://support.amd.com/en-us/download/desktop/legacy?product=legacy3&os=Windows%2010%20-%2064

And if you have a newer graphics adapter like AMD Radeon HD 8600M that is still supported, get the latest AMD driver using https://support.amd.com/en-us/download/auto-detect-tool

Do not use the old back from 2015 driver that Windows Update installs and make sure you replace it with the newer driver again every time manually after you do a Windows 10 feature upgrade (the periodic major update that Microsoft releases). That is till Microsoft decides to fix this issue and install a performing graphics driver (e.g. have AMD get that legacy driver out of beta) and moreover to not replace your graphics driver with an old problematic one that makes your system crawl to its knees.

Fix: WordPress administration UI content area showing up blank

Some time ago, at a WordPress 3.3 blog, a friend was getting a blank main area at the administration UI (just the menu was showing up there) when they visited the classic URL of the form http://somesite/wp-admin/. Here is a writeup of some notes I had kept while troubleshooting that issue and then upgrading to newer WordPress, with updated theme and plugins.

Visiting the problematic admin UI page online, I right-clicked and selected View Source in the browser and browsed to the bottom of it where it was showing: 

That div tag wasn’t not closed with a matching closing div. Obviously some PHP code that was outputing that tag failed at that point.

For starters, I copied all files via FTP (with the FireFtp Firefox plugin) from the remote server locally (into my Dropbox). Useful for backup too in case I messed up something.

Could use grepWin tool (http://stefanstools.sourceforge.net/grepWin.html) to search all locally copied php files for “contextual-help-sidebar” and see which one was outputing this (if that string was assigned to some variable could then search again where that variable was being used).

However, WordPress also has debugging mode, so I edited wp-config.php and uploaded the edited version to the server replacing the old file. I changed WP_DEBUG setting to true below: 

 

At the problematic admin UI online page again, I right-clicked and selected View Source in the browser and browsed to the bottom of it, this time reading:

This led to indentifying the exact place in the PHP code that was causing this issue:

So, I commented out the buggy PHP code, converting it to an HTML comment block instead of a PHP block:

and the admin UI was working again after I pressed ENTER at the address bar again to refresh the admin UI (http://somesite/wp-admin/) and it was not showing up fine (F5 function key didn’t seem to really refresh the site when using Firefox btw, probably some caching issue).

Then installed (the free version) of the WP Database Backup plugin for WordPress:

http://www.wpseeds.com/documentation/docs/wp-database-backup/

by searching for “Backup” at

http://somesite/wp-admin/plugins.php

and evaluating the different backup plugins listed there (judging from both their votes and by checking out if WordPress wasn’t saying at the details page of a plugin that it hasn’t been tested with that [old] 3.3 WordPress version that was on that site) and backed up from Tools/WP-DB Backup menu:

http://somesite/wp-admin/tools.php?page=wp-database-backup

Then Downloaded the MySQL backup (.sql) file, so now I could update Themes, then Plugins, then update WordPress to new Core from

http://somesite/wp-admin/update-core.php

Did keep copies of the wp-content/themes and wp-content/plugins folders before and after updating them of course.

After WP updated, it asked to update the DB, all went ok

Then did backup up again the database via the WP-DB Backup tool and went again to

http://somesite/wp-admin/update-core.php

and installed an update for one of the plugins (can also do update per-plugin from http://somesite/wp-admin/plugins.php)

Then backed up again every file (db not included there) via FTP and done.

HowTo: Reinstall a new Windows 10 build after reverting to older build

At http://www.askvg.com/fix-windows-10-insider-preview-build-10240-not-appearing-on-windows-update/ it writes:

NOTE:

If you previously had a new Windows 10 build installed in your computer and then reverted back to an older build, you’ll lose access to the new build and it’ll no longer be offered as an upgrade option. Deleting the number for that build from the list at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\
  Microsoft\WindowsSelfHost\Applicability\RecoveredFrom key in Registry Editor seems to restore the ability to upgrade. Thanks to our reader "thedicemaster" for this info…

This is useful to know and unfortunately it means that some users may get stuck to an older Windows 10 version. Unless Microsoft has it set like that so that they’ll get automatically the next Windows build (ship the one they were trying to install hoping it fixed the issue they were having). Of course this will work if Microsoft keeps on pushing new builds often, not if they end up updating the OS build once a year or more rare in the future as Windows 10 matures.

To open Registry Editor you can click the Search icon (next to the Windows Start menu icon) at the Windows 10 Taskbar and write RegEdit.exe, then it should offer you a result that says “Run command” that you can click to launch it.

After that, expand the respective tree nodes (that is HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, then SOFTWARE, then Microsoft, then Windows, then WindowsSelfHost) from the side pane and right click and delete the “RecoveredFrom” node.

Then try Windows Update again from State menu / Settings / Update & Security and tell it again to check for updates. In case it still doesn’t offer the updates, wait for 1-2 days and try again.

Troubleshooting: Silverlight installation on MacOS-X

One of our ClipFlair Studio users reported on having some issue trying to install Silverlight on MacOS-X, so I gathered some related info below:

 

---

 

First of all, at the Silverlight installation webpage, at the System Requirements tab, you can find the following requirements:

• Macintosh (Intel-based) Intel Core Duo 1.83-gigahertz (GHz) or higher processor with 512-MB of RAM
• Macintosh OS 10.5.7+ (Intel-based)
• Firefox 3.6+ or Safari 4+ web browser (note that Safari isn’t supported on Windows since it doesn’t support plugins I think)

So, if you use Chrome, checkout https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/2445334?hl=en, although those instructions applied to Silverlight 4. With Silverlight 5 which doesn’t officially support Google Chrome on MacOS-X (supports it only on Windows), there is a serious issue with text input.

Also I’d suggest using Mozilla Firefox instead of Safari.

---

 

If the Mac User already has Silverlight installed but has problems using the Silverlight component take the following steps in Removing Silverlight plugins on Macintosh:

• Double-click the hard drive icon on your desktop
• Find the plugin by Navigating to your Internet Plug-Ins directory: /Library/Internet Plug-Ins/

Remove the plugin by Dragging any of the following into your trash bin:

• Silverlight.plugin
• WPFe.plugin

---

 

The Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion) and higher versions of Mac Operating Systems seem to have the feature called "Resume" which ensures that the Mac system will recall the state of applications and files just before you quit which would allow you to open them up again, and just pick up from where you left off.

However, the "Resume" feature may be a stumbling block when it comes to installing Silverlight.

Therefore, it might be a good idea if we turn off the "Resume" feature temporarily in order to install Silverlight.

If you have a Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion) or higher version then:

1. Go to System Preferences.
2. Go to "General" Tab.
3. Make sure "Restore windows when quitting and re-opening apps" is unchecked.

After successful Silverlight installation you can go back and select that option again.

 

 

---

Ensure that you quit all browsers on the Mac before the installation of Silverlight.

1. From the top menu bar use Quit action to exit the browser. Do the same for all open browsers (e.g. Safari or Mozilla Firefox). Else see above how to set your system to not restore applications after reboot.
2. Shutdown your Mac, and then start up your Mac again.
3. Make sure all browser applications have been quited (don’t just close their open windows, you need to select the Quit menu action to close the browser process).

---

 

After following the above steps, to install Silverlight do the following:

1. Navigate to the folder where your browser places downloaded files.
2. Click on the Silverlight installation file (should be a file with the extension .pkg or it might be file with extension .dmg which contains a file with extension .pkg)
3. Run the installation (the .pkg file)

HowTo: Troubleshoot .MSI installations

Copying from Microsoft Web Deploy readme:

If you encounter any problems during installation, you can run appropriate command listed below for your version of Windows to create a log file that will contain information about the installation process:

msiexec /L install.log /I <path_to_msi>

You can analyze this log file after a failed installation to help determine the cause of the failure.

 

If you don’t have an .MSI but an .EXE, sometimes it’s a packed executable that contains an .MSI in it. You can right-click and open it with an archiver like WinRAR or 7-zip and extract one or more MSI files from there to troubleshoot them separately like above.

Fix: The tag XXX does not exist in XML namespace ‘clr-namespace:YYY’

I just had some big trouble troubleshooting the Visual Studio / XAML compiler error message:

The tag XXX does not exist in XML namespace ‘clr-namespace:YYY’

It turned out this occurred because I had a Silverlight library with Assembly name X and default namespace X (at properties pane), but was using it from a demo project with Assembly name X (again!) and default namespace X.

If I removed the ";assembly=X" part from the XAML it worked fine, that is:

xmlns:my="clr-namespace:X"

Fixing the demo project to use Assembly name X.Demo and default namespace X.Demo (at its Properties pane), instead of having the same assembly name, now allows me to also use

xmlns:my="clr-namespace:X;assembly=X"

without problem.

Seems that when you have multiple assemblies with the same name in a project (wonder how the filesystem supports that), all of them are loaded fine and if they have classes with namespace X in them, the namespace gets classes from both assemblies (that’s why the xmlns without assembly=… works). When you specify assembly name in the XAML of a given project, it assumes you mean its own assembly, not any other referenced one with the same name.

BTW, at add references dialog I was using Projects option (to reference the output of other project in solution) and the project I was referencing was named X.Silverlight (can be named anything), I had not added reference the X assembly .dll file directly. Maybe that played its part too in the issue.

There may be other cases too that can cause this error to fire up, see:

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en/wpf/thread/56f933c8-a093-4c47-8e1a-cde4bb1864e9

InitializeError Message: Failed to load a platform extension in Silverlight

If you get an error like:

Unhandled Error in Silverlight Application Code: 2153 Category: InitializeError Message: Failed to load a platform extension. Possibly corrupt or invalid file: …

when you try to launch your Silverlight application (especially if you have the project set to use an autogenerated test page), you should read:

http://forums.silverlight.net/t/185747.aspx/1

In my case the suggestion to turn off “Reduce XAP size by using application library caching” setting at the Silverlight library project settings fixed the issue.

I was using the internal Visual Studio development web server (Cassini), but some people at the discussion thread above also say it can occur in IIS7, with the problem actually being in compression settings (need to turn off option "Enable dynamic content compression”) and they point to the following discussion:

http://forums.iis.net/p/1164340/2023839.aspx#2023839

What to do if Generic.xaml doesn’t get loaded for WPF control

Just came across http://wangmo.wordpress.com/2007/09/27/themesgenericxaml/ which gave me a hint on why a WPF control wasn’t getting instantiated correctly when loaded from an external assembly (dll):

to load generic.xaml for WPF, at the start of Properties\AssemblyInfo.cs you need (note this isn’t used/needed in Silverlight):

using System.Windows;

and at the end of Properties\AssemblyInfo.cs you need:

[assembly: ThemeInfo(
ResourceDictionaryLocation.None, //where theme specific resource dictionaries are located
//(used if a resource is not found in the page,
// or application resource dictionaries)
ResourceDictionaryLocation.SourceAssembly //where the generic resource dictionary is located
//(used if a resource is not found in the page,
// app, or any theme specific resource dictionaries)
)]

Mind you that if the project doesn’t show a Properties node in Solution Explorer, you have to either make a new project using the correct template (for a WPF custom control), or right click the project, select Properties, then press the Assembly Information button and enter some dummy values, then OK to create the Properties node (which also creates to a Properties subfolder and AssemblyInfo.cs file).

You can expand (drop-down) the special Properties node in solution explorer then to open AssemblyInfo.cs and add the above stuff if missing.