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.