• Article

Settings.Windowless Property

Microsoft Silverlight will reach end of support after October 2021. Learn more.

Gets a value that indicates whether the Silverlight plug-in displays as a windowless plug-in. (Applies to Windows versions of Silverlight only.)

Namespace:  System.Windows.Interop
Assembly:  System.Windows (in System.Windows.dll)

Syntax

'Declaration
Public ReadOnly Property Windowless As Boolean

public bool Windowless { get; }

Property Value

Type: System.Boolean
true if the Silverlight plug-in displays as a windowless plug-in; otherwise, false.

Remarks

This property can be set only as an initialization parameter and is read-only for all other access models. For more information, see Windowless (Silverlight Plug-in Object). On Macintosh computers, this property has no effect either at initialization or at run time, and the behavior is always windowless.

In windowless mode, the Silverlight plug-in does not have its own rendering window. Instead, the plug-in content is displayed directly by the browser window. This enables Silverlight content to visually overlap and blend with HTML content if the plug-in and its content both specify background transparency. For more information, see Background and Background (Silverlight Plug-in Object). You can also display HTML content on top of Silverlight content in windowless mode.

Windowless mode is useful to achieve certain effects, but it has significant limitations. Therefore, you should use windowless mode only when it is necessary. In particular, complex animations and high definition video content will not perform well in windowless mode. To compensate, you can adjust the frame rate for Silverlight content by using the MaxFrameRate property. However, you should also test your code with a variety of platforms and browsers when you use windowless mode.

The limitations of windowless mode are as follows:

  • Performance issues. Windowless mode is computationally expensive, especially in combination with a transparent plug-in background. For more information, see Performance Tips.

  • No support for passing mouse input to HTML content that the plug-in overlaps, even if the plug-in has a transparent background. To process mouse input through HTML, the HTML must overlap the Silverlight plug-in.

  • No mouse capture support outside the boundary of the plug-in.

  • No accessibility or IME support.

  • No support for windowless mode in full-screen mode.

  • No support for suppressing popup blockers when using hyperlink navigation to new windows. Also, note that popup blocker suppression is not supported on Safari regardless of the windowing mode.

  • Issues because of browser and platform limitations:

    • Visual tearing in animation and video playback on Windows XP, on Windows Vista with DWM disabled, and in Internet Explorer, regardless of platform.

    • Unreliable rendering when overlapping HTML content in Safari.

    • Focus issues in Mozilla-based browsers. When the focus moves between the plug-in and other plug-ins or HTML controls, multiple controls will sometimes appear to have focus.

Examples

The following code example demonstrates how to use this property.

' The Host object, which represents the host Silverlight plug-in. 
Dim host As System.Windows.Interop.SilverlightHost = _
    Application.Current.Host

' The following code demonstrates how to use the Host object 
' to access other APIs in the System.Windows.Interop namespace. 

' The IsVersionSupported method. This method is useful when 
' you want to implement an upgrade experience in managed code. 
Dim isSupported As Boolean = host.IsVersionSupported("2.0.30908.0")

' Read-only properties of the Host object. 
Dim pluginBackground As System.Windows.Media.Color = host.Background
Dim loaded As Boolean = host.IsLoaded
Dim source As Uri = host.Source

' The Settings object, which represents Web browser settings. 
Dim settings As System.Windows.Interop.Settings = host.Settings

' Read/write properties of the Settings object. 
settings.EnableFrameRateCounter = True
settings.EnableRedrawRegions = True
settings.MaxFrameRate = 60

' Read-only properties of the Settings object. 
Dim windowless As Boolean = settings.Windowless
Dim htmlAccessEnabled As Boolean = settings.EnableHTMLAccess

' The Content object, which represents the plug-in display area. 
Dim content As System.Windows.Interop.Content = host.Content

' The read/write IsFullScreen property of the Content object. 
' See also the Content.FullScreenChanged event. 
Dim isFullScreen As Boolean = content.IsFullScreen

' Read-only properties of the Content object. These properties do 
' not contain meaningful values until after the Content.Resized 
' event occurs for the first time. 
Dim actualWidth As Double = content.ActualWidth
Dim actualHeight As Double = content.ActualHeight

// The Host object, which represents the host Silverlight plug-in.
System.Windows.Interop.SilverlightHost host = 
    Application.Current.Host;

// The following code demonstrates how to use the Host object
// to access other APIs in the System.Windows.Interop namespace.

// The IsVersionSupported method. This method is useful when
// you want to implement an upgrade experience in managed code.
bool isSupported = host.IsVersionSupported("2.0.30908.0");

// Read-only properties of the Host object.
System.Windows.Media.Color pluginBackground = host.Background;
bool loaded = host.IsLoaded;
Uri source = host.Source;

// The Settings object, which represents Web browser settings.
System.Windows.Interop.Settings settings = host.Settings;

// Read/write properties of the Settings object.
settings.EnableFrameRateCounter = true;
settings.EnableRedrawRegions = true;
settings.MaxFrameRate = 60;

// Read-only properties of the Settings object.
bool windowless = settings.Windowless;
bool htmlAccessEnabled = settings.EnableHTMLAccess;

// The Content object, which represents the plug-in display area.
System.Windows.Interop.Content content = host.Content;

// The read/write IsFullScreen property of the Content object.
// See also the Content.FullScreenChanged event.
bool isFullScreen = content.IsFullScreen;

// Read-only properties of the Content object. These properties do 
// not contain meaningful values until after the Content.Resized 
// event occurs for the first time. 
double actualWidth = content.ActualWidth;
double actualHeight = content.ActualHeight;

Version Information

Silverlight

Supported in: 5, 4, 3

Platforms

For a list of the operating systems and browsers that are supported by Silverlight, see Supported Operating Systems and Browsers.