Comments on: Renaming Xap to Zip is dead. Long live renaming Xap to Zip!

By: Jeff Wilcox

Jeff Wilcox — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 02:11:09 +0000

@Tom and @unruledboy, makes sense: often I’m in an environment where we just have Windows installed, like a test lab – so although we can run registry files with ease, I typically won’t have the opportunity to install custom software on the machine.

For a lot of folks, sounds like your solutions would work best though.

By: unruledboy

unruledboy — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 02:06:44 +0000

press shift and right click the xap file, choose winzip/winrar to open it, and you can treat it like zip ever since.

By: Jeff Wilcox

Jeff Wilcox — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 17:08:55 +0000

@Dave,
Thanks – do you know if that can be used to set the MIME type to application/x-silverlight-app, too?

By: Dave

Dave — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 15:21:29 +0000

You can also run the command:
cmd /c assoc .xap=CompressedFolder

This way you don’t have to modify the registry.

By: Tom

Tom — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 15:06:58 +0000

Wow. I thought people only used the shell support for zip files if they didn’t know any better or were using a machine where they couldn’t install a real program for handling them. (Personally I prefer 7-Zip.) Sorry for the negativity but the “shell experience” for zip files is downright embarrassing IMO. I heard it was going to be improved in Vista SP1, but I never checked it because 7-Zip works so well for me.

By: Alex

Alex — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 15:10:05 +0000

The registry works well on Windows XP, too.

By: Mark Nijhof

Mark Nijhof — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 11:06:49 +0000

Hi Jeff,

You can get the same results if you right click the file choose ‘Open With’ then go for the ‘Choose default program …’ option even if your right choice is listed. Then choose the default program you want to use to open the files and make sure you check ‘Always use the selected program to open this kind of file’. And you are done.

-Mark

By: Jeff Wilcox

Jeff Wilcox — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 11:06:42 +0000

@egoZd, I’ve been able to unzip and rezip from Red Hat fine – can you check the recompressed version to make sure the directory structure is the same, and that it doesn’t have a subdirectory at the root?

By: egoZd

egoZd — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 09:22:39 +0000

It’s seems silverlight 2.0 ,Do not support common compress format anymore , After i compile my silverlight the xap file is about 500k , But when i unzip it and rezip to zip format it about 300k , But when it uploaded it do not work anymore (I think it worked in beta 2)

By: Jeff Klawiter

Jeff Klawiter — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 02:37:46 +0000

There’s just one issue, try installing the XNA framework. The Xact Tool for creating sound files for a game uses .xap for it’s project file extension.

Obviously the two teams do not speak to each other.