10 gigabytes for Silverlight applications for free!

As many know, a significant event recently occurred for Silverlight developers - the release of the third version of this RIA platform. Description of all the innovations Silverlight 3 takes a few pages and will serve as material for many articles. But this article is not about this, but about the Microsoft Silverlight Streaming service , which offers you 10 gigabytes of free space for your silverlight applications!
The bottom line is that within a few minutes after creating a silverlight application, you can use remote hosting to support it. You can insert links to it into your pages and projects, without loading your servers with requests and traffic. A kind of CDN for silverlight applications. Fast, easy and free!

Start

At http://silverlight.live.com/ you are offered to register for access to free hosting. If you have a Live Id , then registration will not require anything except pressing a couple of buttons. You do not even need to receive any confirmation letters. If there is no Live Id, then you will have to get it, but it's worth it, since Live Id gives you access to dozens of useful services. After registration you will see the next page.

Here you will receive your public account identifier and a private key that should not be shown to anyone. After that, you can add new applications to your repository. To do this, go to Manage Applications . The application management page looks like this:

To upload your silverlight application (xap file), click Upload an application . In the form that appears, enter the project name and click Create . Now you can download the xap-file or zip-file of the application complete with the manifest. Pay attention to the warning, if your application contains a video file, it should not be more than 105 megabytes and its bitrate should not be more than 1.4 megabits. After you click Upload, a page will appear with a suggestion to configure manifest for the application.

Click Create to create a manifest. In the form that appears, fill in all the required fields and click Update.

It's all! There is simply no place. Reading this article took you more time than creating your storage and uploading your silverlight application to a free CDN. On the page that will appear after the download, you will be offered two options for embedding the link to the downloaded silverlight application in your projects. In addition, you can test the application on a special test page. To do this, click on the Launch Application Test Page .

The service is extremely simple and convenient. You can manage your applications, update them. You can manage your video files. In addition, an SDK is available that offers an API for working with Silverlight Streaming.

Restrictions

Of course, as with any service, there are limitations. According to the following text:

In the case of the service, it is free to use it. The videos should not exceed 10 minutes and have a maximum bit rate of 1.4 Mbps. If you are going to be a
')
The limitations of the service are as follows: 10 gigabytes of free space for your applications, 5 terabytes of traffic per account per month. Video should not be longer than 10 minutes and have a maximum bitrate of 1.4 Mbps. After exiting the beta, the service will remain free with ads or offer to pay a small amount for the lack of advertising.

Conclusion

Silverlight Streaming offers excellent hosting services for silverlight applications with extensive features and minimal restrictions. While in beta, hosting is free and contains no advertising. In the future, the service will be monetized, but the possibilities will be left exactly the same. In my opinion, a wonderful service that is definitely worth trying for everyone and everyone who creates silverlight applications.