Navigating AWAY from your Silverlight page

Sooner or later you’ll want to send people away from your Silverlight site. Maybe to a friends page or a company’s main site? These are two ways of handling navigation easily.

Popup Window

To allow people to continue browsing your site whilst opening links of interest, you might want to open new links in separate windows, or in most cases, separate tabs (new windows are so 2004).

In your codebehind, create a quick HtmlPopupWindowOptions object. This object is reusable if you don’t mind using the same settings for all your new windows. In this example, I’m using a twitter button to open a popup version of my twitter stream. Since twitter works in low resolutions, I can adapt my settings to suit the situation.

private void TwitterButton_MouseLeftButtonUp(object sender, MouseButtonEventArgs e)
{
HtmlPopupWindowOptions options = new HtmlPopupWindowOptions();
options.Left = 0;
options.Top = 0;
options.Width = 800;
options.Height = 600;

HtmlPage.PopupWindow(new Uri("http://www.twitter.com/viktorlarsson", UriKind.Absolute), "new" , options);
}

Direct Link

Sometimes a direct approach is better. And hey, if Mr. Smith is more interested in reading somehing Janko wrote than my rundown of my top three shirts to pack, maybe it’s just as well he’s leaving my site.

Old-fashioned navigation is easier to implement than pop-ups. All you need is this line of code:

private void Fake_Janko_Link_MouseLeftButtonUp(object sender, MouseButtonEventArgs e)
{
//Muahahahahaha
HtmlPage.Window.Navigate(new Uri("http://www.fragiledevelopment.wordpress.com"));
}

This is also useable if you want to enable e-mail usage on your site. Simply replace the http-link with a mailto link instead. You can even enter a standard subject.

private void LuckButton_MouseLeftButtonUp(object sender, MouseButtonEventArgs e)
{
HtmlPage.Window.Navigate(new Uri("mailto:Michael.Bjorn@avanade.com?subject=Good Luck in Vegas!"));
}

Feel free to try this out below and wish Michael all the luck he can get

Click me hard!