Silverlight 4 is coming, and with it a controversial ability to call local automation objects. In this post, I will review some of the standard automation objects that can be used from Silverlight 4.

Shell.Application

Shell Automation enables access to features of Windows shell. This includes displaying standard dialogs, arranging windows, starting applications, starting and stopping services, and more.

Probably the most useful function of Shell.Application is ShellExecute. Using ShellExecute, it’s possible to run executable or open or print a document.

dynamic shell = ComAutomationFactory.CreateObject("Shell.Application");
shell.ShellExecute("notepad.exe", "", "", "open", 1);

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