Can Silverlight apps be embedded into PowerPoint?

Question

Can Silverlight apps be embedded into PowerPoint? We're currently weighing the pros and cons of Silverlight vs. Flash, and are primarily interested in charting controls. The higher-ups would like to have aesthetically appealing dynamic charts included in PowerPoint presentations, with the ability to migrate these over to an online solution at a future time.

Answer 1

All Silverlight apps need to be hosted in a browser, so you would need to get an HTML page in to your PPT. This could probably be done by embedding a Winforms browser control in a page using VBA.

The XAP file and web page that hosts the Silverlight control(s) would need to be either hosted on an available web server, or the files placed locally on each PC that will run the presentation, which introduces additional dependencies.

Another problem you may have is to link the "dynamic charts" to data. If you are able to have all the data be static and encapsulated inside your Silverlight controls then this might be workable, but if you need to connect the charts to data in your powerpoint presentation, you could end up doing a lot of coding to get this to work.

Long story short, I would suggest that Silverlight is probably not the right tool for embedding visual content into PowerPoint. It is really expressly designed for online/web deployment.