Microsoft Silverlight in Opera browser
Although Opera is not listed as one of the officially supported web browsers for Silverlight, there is a workaround to get Silverlight up and running in Opera. Please note, however, that this is not supported or encouraged procedure, it is listed here for educational purposes only.
…and yeah, if you like taking chances.
I am not able to give you assurance that each and every Silverlight based content will work in Opera by using hack provided bellow but It should work is majority of cases.
Also, both Silverlight 1.0 and Silverlight 2.0 are supported, and I believe that it should be working on Mac systems using Opera as well.
So… As you maybe already know you can’t try using Opera’s Mask as feature, but in this case, that simply won’t help.
Here is how to get your Opera running and showing Silverlight content.
First you need to get yourself Opera browser in case you don’t have it installed already. After that, same thing goes for Silverlight. Go and get it in case you don’t have in on your computer already. Then you should download this Silverlight.js file which is basically a hack, written by Ondrej Tomec from Czech Republic – so, yeah, he is the guy to blame for getting you Silverlight in your Opera browsers. Thumbs up!
Next step is to copy all Silverlight DLL files into Opera’s plugins folder. Silverlight DLL’s are located at C:\Program Files\Microsoft Silverlight (or something like that depending on your system) and Opera’s plugins are at C:\Program Files\Opera\program\plugins.
Now, put that Silverlight.js file you downloaded from Ondrej into Opera’s JavaScript directory – located somewhere at C:\Program Files\Opera\userjs.
Restart your browser (including all currently running instances) and navigate to some site with Silverlight content.
Good starting point is http://www.silverlight.net/
This was for Silverlight 1.0 since it is using JavaScript as its “language”. Regarding Silverlight 2.0 – you don’t need to do anything – just install it on your computer and Opera should get along with it nicely.
As some users have noticed, you may encounter some instability within Opera, and Ondrej says that text input doesn’t work (I cannot confirm that one since it was working nicely with me for few times and then failed for some other times…).
Microsoft has confirmed that it will support Silverlight in Opera in future releases, and in the mean time, all of you Opera fans can rely on great job Ondrej has done.
Best user experiences are born when you don’t need to impose severe restrictions on your user’s choices – and that goes for internet browsers as well!
Take a look at some Silverlight sites:
First and foremost, good start is Silverlight.net – Official web site
Sample Silverlight 1.0 web site on Croatian elections in 2007
Works like charm! Thnks!
Opera works if you embed the silverlight code in a object tag.
Opera 10.10 build 1778 and silverlight 3 works just fine, no need to trick.
Yup, this article was written for previous versions! Thanks for your comment Hector!
Hey, I found this blog article while searching for help with Microsoft Silverlight. I’ve recently changed internet browser from Safari to Firefox 3.2. Now I seem to have a issue with loading sites that use Microsoft Silverlight. Everytime I go on a website that requires Microsoft Silverlight, my computer freezes and I get a “npctrl.dll” error. I cannot seem to find out how to fix the problem. Any help getting Microsoft Silverlight to work is greatly appreciated! Thanks