Nathan Dunlap : Resources

Hooray for WinHEC bits!

ndunlap — Fri, 07 May 2004 19:07:00 GMT

Now that the SDK has been updated I can finally start posting on some of the really cool features that I have been playing with for the last couple of months.

I've got an article in the works that is an updated version of my GelButton that I posted earlier. Its not finished yet, but if you want to get a sneak peek you can see the source code and screen shots here. http://www.longhornblogs.com/ndunlap/articles/3392.aspx It isn't a straight port of the original GelButton demo, but I have drastically reduced the complexity of how it was created using Grid. Also I have made the drop shadow and the shines on the button much more aesthetically pleasing using the Blur ImageEffect.

Now that the SDK is live here are some links I think are pretty exciting and interesting...

Grid
http://longhorn.msdn.microsoft.com/lhsdk/ref/ns/system.windows.controls/c/grid/grid.aspx
http://longhorn.msdn.microsoft.com/lhsdk/layout/overviews/grid_ovw.aspx
This panel is awesome. I will admit I havent been using it enough to really feel like I have mastered its use but it really fixes the issues I blogged on earlier about not being able to do margin effects easily without doing the DockPanel.Dock=“fill“ workaround. Grid allows you to apply NineGrid like slice and dice control on layouts that contain things other than image data. When I started using shape elements to create the visuals for my controls and applications layouts I immediately found myself wanting to have the same kind of control like I had with NineGrid. With the Grid panel I get that kind of control but I am not limited to a nine cell configuration. This is very cool and powerful and there are going to be some really exciting and creative designs enabled using this. I can't wait to see the different way people use this.

ImageEffects
http://longhorn.msdn.microsoft.com/lhsdk/ref/ns/system.windows.media/c/imageeffect/imageeffect.aspx
So far the one I am using a lot is Blur. With blur I can create some gorgeous drop shadows, on any kind of elment, text, shape, button, etc. My GelButton example is using it a lot. I've also got some cool laser effects I am doing with blur that I will be posting on.

OpacityMasks
http://longhorn.msdn.microsoft.com/lhsdk/graphicsmm/overviews/opacitymasking.aspx
Another great toy for pulling off some sweet effects. You can use gradients, images, DrawingBrushes, etc to create your masks.

3D
http://longhorn.msdn.microsoft.com/lhsdk/graphicsmm/overviews/basic3d.aspx
Need I say more? Ok I will.... This changes everything. No more hard line between creating 3D content and mixing it with 2D content. I had been asking for 2D perspective transform so I could pull off pseudo 3D effects...Real 3D is so much better! Try this sometime... create an app that has 3D elements that composite on top of 2D elements like a complex layout with text flowing in it. Then composite that on top of another 3D element and hey while your at it throw a video element at the very bottom of the stack so it has to render through all that stuff. Hmm maybe throw a video element on top and set some opacity on it. Maybe even put an opacity mask on the topmost video element. Then animate a bunch of stuff. Run it full screen. Its definitely a new world we are living in! I will get some posts with cool 3D samples up soon.

DrawingBrush in resources...
One note for people that have read my earlier blogs about using DrawingBrush... There are some changes with how DrawingBrush works when it is used as a resource. If your app has DrawingBrushes defined as a resource you will need to do a work around for the app to still work. I will try to post simple code soon. In the meantime you can see how I got my DrawingBrush resources working in the LoginScreen Demo http://longhorn.msdn.microsoft.com/lhsdk/sampledocs/sampleapplications/wcpsamp_demosample_loginscreen.aspx. Check out default.xaml.cs and look at the Init event. You can still use a DrawingBrush as a resource, just not as a resource before the application has loaded. Basically the first access to a DrawingBrush needs to happen before the DrawingBrush is used to render, so accessing it in the start up event causes the first access to occur before layout and render has happened.

Global styles and resources using application level resources

ndunlap — Fri, 19 Dec 2003 00:00:00 GMT

In DHTML you can create global CSS stylesheets that allow you to access your styles across multiple web pages. You can do the same thing by storing your resources in the application object. This is much more powerful with XAML because you can store more than just styles. For example, for my visual style I would store all my themed icons created using DrawingBrushes, my custom control modifications and defined metrics using styles, and all my colors as named resources. I can even resource text strings at the application level.

The SDK has a simple Application Level Resources demo here. This is a good doc on understanding the Application Object.

The quick summary on how this works is that you create your resource block in your application definition page.

<Application.Resources>
      <Color def:Name=“CustomColor1“ ... />
      <Image def:Name=“CustomLogo1“ ... />
      <Style def:Name=“CustomStyle1“ ... />
<Application.Resources>

</Application>

Now every page in you application will be able to access these three resources.

Where this gets really cool is when you start to use BasedOn styles to modify application level defined styles at the page level. I will post some good uses for BasedOn styles later.

Reusing Vectors with Styles and def:Includes

ndunlap — Wed, 17 Dec 2003 00:30:00 GMT

In my last post I mentioned that drawing brush is good when you don't want your vectors to intelligently resize and layout. So what do I do when I want to reuse vectors that I do want to dynamically resize? Well the obvious solution is to build my vector elements directly inline. The only problem is that this becomes really difficult to manage. So here are some tricks I use to avoid XAML bloat using def:include resources or styles. This allows me to use vectors as I would inline to get the benefit of layout, but I can reuse common designed elements.

I have posted an example here that demonstrates creating a panel with a "cutout" effect.

First, def:include resources are the most intuitive way to go, but in the PDC builds you can only use one instance of a def:include. (Don't worry, this will be fixed so that you can use it as you would expect...)

Here is how you define it:

Here is how you use it:

<def:Include def:Content="{MyCustomCanvas}"/>

Another way of doing this is by using Style resources. ( I will be going into way more depth on how to use Styles soon. )

Here is how you define it:

Here is how you use it:

Creating vector icons with DrawingBrush

ndunlap — Tue, 16 Dec 2003 00:13:00 GMT

OK, creating icons in today's world sucks... First I have to create multiple sizes of icons 16x, 24x, 32x 48x, 64x, etc. Even when I go through all the trouble of making sure I have all the different dimensions of the icons I need, I still run the risk of my icons being mangled when they show up on a monitor running a different DPI (with high dpi monitors on their way, this is becoming more and more of an issue).

Creating vector icons with DrawingBrush is a way that I get around the problems of needing multiple resolution and multiple dimension icons. DrawingBrush allows me to basically combine a bunch of vector shapes and then define them as a brush resource that I can paint the Fill, Background properties on elements. This is really convenient when I want to get the benefit of using vectors if I want my strokes and shapes to always proportionally scale and I don't mind if the vectors don't intelligently resize or if the strokes become distorted when stretching and scaling. This is typically the behavior I expect when I am using graphical elements like clipart and icons.

Here is what it looks like:

The image below show is a snap shot of a DrawingBrush that is used for various sized icons. I kept the jpg low res for the web, but if you run the app linked below you will see that the fidelity on every one of the icons is excellent. The stretched image shows that you will distort your shapes and strokes, but you wont ever show any pixelation.

Defining resources in markup

ndunlap — Thu, 11 Dec 2003 02:22:00 GMT

In the SDK is a demo where I completely change the look and feel of an app by swapping out resources on the fly based on user interaction. This demo is located here if you want to try it out.

I've got another demo where I have one set of resources defined on a page level that references application level resources. In the app level resources all that I define are some color and brush resources. Doing this made it super easy to just replace the app level resources to update the colors throughout the application, but I was able to maintain all the crazy styling that I had done on the other pages. At some point I will clean that demo up and post it.

I have posted a sample that I think is a really useful reference for using resources in markup here.

The types of resources I have in this sample include how to define and use bytes, strings, colors, brushes, styles, XMLDataSources, and more.

The demo doesn't do anything interesting other than just defines the different types of resources and then uses them. It's pretty cool though because I chain the resources off of each other. For example: I define a def:include that creates a button that uses a brush resource. That brush resource uses a color resource. The color resource uses a byte resource. All of this using markup only!