Optimizing the Silverlight Install Experience
Adam Kinney wrote a good blog entry last week on the importance for site authors of considering the first-time experience of a visitor. I guess most readers of this blog have Silverlight installed today, but at least in these first months as we focus on getting the plug-in broadly deployed, it's particularly important that site authors take care to test the experience of a visitor who doesn't already have Silverlight on their machine. The Silverlight installation process itself is fairly straightforward: we've done everything possible to minimize the number of clicks between site visit and first-time control instantiation, but our own work with early adopter sites has shown there are best practices that can greatly improve the user experience.
To that end, here are a few helpful tips:
- Use the inplaceInstallPrompt:true parameter in CreateSilverlight.js to present the Silverlight installer directly from the current home page rather than redirecting the end-user to the Silverlight site for the installer.
- Use the <div> tag into which Silverlight content is presented to create pre-install content (e.g. a static image that provides a glimpse of the final site experience when the user installs Silverlight) and present the Silverlight installer button as an overlay over that image;
- Use the Silverlight.ua.Browser property to provide guidance to the user (for example, warning them that they may not be able to install Silverlight if they are using Netscape 4.0 as their browser).
- Use a timeout delegate to see if the installation is complete, and, if so, refresh the browser automatically so the end-user doesn't have to manually hit F5 to reload the content.
To make this even easier, we've created a small download package that provides further guidance around installation in the form of a whitepaper and sample code. This MSI package doesn't make any changes to your machine except to extract the documentation and whitepaper to your documents folder. In our experience, it's well worth the hour or so it takes to implement these changes to your site to get the most out of Silverlight: it makes your site look more professional and reduces user confusion.
Comments
Anonymous
October 29, 2007
Tim Sneath just posted some tips for optimizing the Silverlight install experience for your site's endAnonymous
October 29, 2007
The comment has been removedAnonymous
October 29, 2007
The comment has been removedAnonymous
October 29, 2007
Thanks Tim! I know in a post a few days back you referenced having this type of flexibiilty in the install experience. I'm glad to see you follow it up with some technical direction on how to get this done. We've recently looked at doing this a few different ways for some content on blendables.com and I'm happy to see a guide to help choose the right approach. Thanks, KurtAnonymous
October 29, 2007
One of the things that is important to think about when you start using Silverlight in your sites/applicationsAnonymous
October 29, 2007
Thanks for the download. Any reason this has to be a full blown MSI and not just a ZIP file?! I hate my "Add or Remove Programs" list getting filled up with MSDN docs which are clearly NOT programs :(Anonymous
October 30, 2007
The comment has been removedAnonymous
October 30, 2007
The comment has been removedAnonymous
October 30, 2007
Tim Sneath has put together a post and his team a whitepaper with information on how to do an in-placeAnonymous
October 30, 2007
Cioè come migliorare l'esperienza dell'utente che arriva sul nostro sito e che non ha ancora scaricatoAnonymous
October 30, 2007
Silverlight is still in its infancy, but its user experience needs to be top notch for it to gain tractionAnonymous
October 31, 2007
Silverlight Installation Experience GuideAnonymous
November 01, 2007
Over the past 3 weeks, I have been touring across Canada giving a half-day briefing on Silverlight. ItAnonymous
November 01, 2007
Over the past 3 weeks, I have been touring across Canada giving a half-day briefing on Silverlight. ItAnonymous
November 02, 2007
Adam Kinney and Tim Sneath both discuss those users that have yet to install SL; Tim Stall has a niceAnonymous
November 03, 2007
It would also be useful to be able to count the number of users who come to your site without Silverlight and those who then install it in response to the prompts, or leave the site still without Silverlight. Any ideas how this could be coded?Anonymous
November 06, 2007
The comment has been removedAnonymous
November 18, 2007
随着 Silverlight 1.0 在今年9月5日的全球同步发布，在国内包括"百度"在内的越来越多的网站开始选择应用了 Silverlight 技术。下面就对 SilverlightAnonymous
December 01, 2007
The comment has been removedAnonymous
January 02, 2008
Happy New Year everyone! Hope everyone had a relaxed and enjoyable holiday. The peacock family I metAnonymous
April 15, 2008
Silverlight is still in its infancy, but its user experience needs to be top notch for it to gain tractionAnonymous
June 28, 2008
Tim Sneath has put together a post and his team a whitepaper with information on how to do an in-place install of Silverlight. Using the default approach (as we did on our early work) is ok, but it isn't a great user experience. In that setup, the