How to open a silverlight file in visual studio

visual-studio-2010 silverlight-4.0 xap
109221793 picture 109221793 · Dec 15, 2010 · Viewed 8.6k times · Source

Just a quick question. I have a system which contains some silverlight elements to it. I don't have any idea of the coding behind silverlight, but all I need to do is change some text so I figure if I can get into the file I could manage it.

So the file I think I need to open is called SilverlightUploader.xap, however when I open it, in the text editor, all I see is this:

PK‚y~=Ø|n²lø­’ÁNÂ@†ï&¾CÓØ6DÑJB€
±¨ç¥dãîN³;…ÖWóà#ù
¶€XP®³óýÿü;óùþÑîC"1W ÉÉ”Ô6pgDIËól4Å-S"2hqJ,BåER­^Ã÷o¼xƒº+¶•ÕС§Y    7½Œ+é:M&¡ÐÔµÔDæ;¥“¾0…œƒ‘âeF…ÁT™qž@àîibÝ$q‡T“PðÆ
Ô{Å|víß6šÌw;—ŽS ÏFÜ]V‹ú÷0eÑÉZ÷\Aý\!¦&ªíc±,r{ÂÜ(ö,tŒËzX$FiÙQ¾
ú±ªi<ƒj£¹´wÝ Uÿ¶·÷³«+d+n

I'm fairly sure I've previously downloaded and installed the Silverlight tools for visual studio, however maybe I need to do this again?

Has anyone else had any experience with this?

Answer

Donut picture Donut · Dec 15, 2010

.xap files are basically just zip files containing the compiled version of your application (DLLs, images, etc.). For more information on the structure of a .xap file, see here.
If you want to see for yourself, you could download 7-Zip and extract SilverlightUploader.xap to get a look at specifically what's inside it (or just change the extension to .zip).
However, you're going to need to get the original source of the program in order to be able to modify it. The Silverlight tools for Visual Studio aren't going to do you any good otherwise.

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