Hello, the short answer is 'no, right now Silverlight is not supported' (as of 2010-04-03).

The longer answer is that even if we ported our components to previous versions of Silverligth they would not be very usable. Because of security reasons, the Silverlight runtime which runs in web browsers can only connect to the site from which the webpage was served. Additionally, the allowed TCP port range is limited to ports from 4502 to 4534. You would be unable to easily connect to IMAP server.

In the current version of Silverlight, you can run your code in:

• web browser sandbox (as before)
• as a standalone app on a mobile phone (such as Windows Phone 7)
• as a standalone app on a desktop computer

With Silverlight 4.0 you can also run you app in Elevated Trust mode (see this blogpost for details and MSDN article on this topic) which relaxes some security restrictions.

Considering this, it may make sense to think about porting our components to Silverlight now.

Would it be possible to edit your post and add details about your usage scenario? What platform would you use (webbrowser, phone, desktop app)? What you would like to achieve?

It's not the case at all that a silverlight client can only talk to the host site. Many of the "getting started" demos and videos show creating a Twitter reader in Silverlight, and the other day I saw a facebook silverlight application.

My research has shown the hurdle is indeed limitations like the port issue you mentioned. I don't see how you'd overcome that, even with elevated trust. At the end of the day, I think you'll still be forced to write some sort of service around the imap functionality and have the silverlight talk to that.

I am starting to do that now. I basically need a silverlight mail client, and I have to start working on it immediately. My current environment will be a SL4 web browser application, but could eventually include mobile phone.