What is the purpose of the 'ClientBin' folder in Silverlight/ASP.NET?

Question

Mostly due to the relative URI feature/problem in silverlight, I'm considering moving a Silverlight .xap out of ClientBin to the root of a website?

What I don't understand is the purpose of the ClientBin folder in the first place. Is there security restrictions placed on this folder (similar to why you would put perl scripts in cgi-bin).

Is there debugging options enabled for this folder?

Or is it simply a predetermined convention which can be changed (with some work) with no other ramifications?

Answer 1

The ClientBin folder is just the default. As you have to specify this folder in the the .xap path it could be anywhere.

<object data="data:application/x-silverlight-2,"
        type="application/x-silverlight-2" width="100%" height="100%">
    <param name="source" value="ClientBin/SilverlightApplication1.xap"/>
    <param name="onError" value="onSilverlightError" />
    <param name="background" value="white" />
    <param name="minRuntimeVersion" value="3.0.40624.0" />
    <param name="autoUpgrade" value="true" />
    <a href="http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=149156&v=3.0.40624.0"
       style="text-decoration:none">
        <img src="http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=108181"
             alt="Get Microsoft Silverlight" style="border-style:none"/>
    </a>

The "source" value can be anything.

You'd have to update your project to ensure that the .xap file was copied to the new location though.

I don't think there are any security restrictions on this folder - at least there haven't been on any of the Silverlight projects I've used.