SilverPlus Application Development

The SilverPlus development environment provides the following benefits:

   Customized user interface tools

   Command and command UI handling

   SilverScreen frame and view event handling via subclassing

   Native-code execution speed

The SilverPlus development platform is a similar concept to creating an add-on for browsers like Firefox. That is, you package your functionality and resources into a product that is then associated with and invoked from the parent application. In the case of a browser add-on, the parent application is the browser (i.e. Firefox, Chrome). In the case of a SilverPlus application, the parent application is SilverScreen.

Note: Because a SilverPlus DLL is invoked via SilverC and works like an add-on, it is dependent upon an installed copy of SilverScreen to run, and for the purposes of extending SilverC, a DLL must have executable code in it.

The SilverPlus development platform allows Win32 and MFC DLLs  (or Dynamic Link Libraries) to be loaded, unloaded, and invoked from SilverC. A DLL in the Windows environment is a collection of resources including executable code, graphical elements like dialog templates and menus, and data, such as strings.  DLL developers retain the ability to use SilverScreen script commands and the SilverScreen API library.  In addition, the developer may use familiar Visual Studio tools to build user interface components such as dialogs, menus and toolbars.

Since SilverScreen itself is written using the Microsoft Foundation Class library (MFC), DLL developers can take advantage of the MFC framework inherent in SilverScreen, meaning that there is almost no user interface dependence on SilverScreen.

SilverScreen does not directly load DLLs; the SilverPlus developer must write a SilverC application to manage the loading and unloading of DLLs, and also to direct flow of execution into and out of the DLL. A  SilverC program does this by using the REX interface: rex_load , rex_unload and rex_exec.

See the topic Creating a SilverPlus Application for a full review of this process.

The following image shows how SilverScreen, a SilverPlus DLL, and a SilverC application work together to build a SilverPlus application.

SilverScreen application with DLLs