For those who have been developing against the Live Framework, one of the biggest drawbacks of doing this is having to give up your Mesh client on your dev PC. The choice was sadly rather simple, either use the Live Framework client so you can develop some cool apps, or use Live Mesh (folder syncing, RDP, etc). All the main Live Mesh features were disabled in the Live Framework client. Bummer, huh.

Well, now, thanks to James Senior, we can have both! From his blog entry:

To run both Mesh Client Beta (installed from www.mesh.com) and Live Framework Client (installed from developer.mesh-ctp.com) side by side:

1. Uninstall Live Framework Client.

2. Install Mesh Client Beta from www.mesh.com.

3. Add the following registry item:

HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Live Framework Client\AllowSxS = 1 (DWORD)

4. Install Live Framework client from developer.mesh-ctp.com.

To make sure both clients working properly, you need follow the exact install order above.

There are some known issues:

· It might be confusing which client you are signing. You can tell the difference from the title of the sign in dialog. The title with “Live Mesh Beta” is the client targeting www.mesh.com.

The title with “Live Mesh TECH PREVIEW” is Live Framework Client targeting developer.mesh-ctp.com.

After sign in, you will see two icons in your system tray:

And that’s all there is to it. So a big thank you to the LiveFX guys for putting that workaround in place.