DotNetKicks.com : Stories kicked by jdollah

Preview of Windows 7

Fri, 14 Nov 2008 21:39:39 GMT

A preview of Windows 7 Pre-Beta on a high-end laptop.

Creating an Outlook Calendar using WPF (Part 2)

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 12:48:30 GMT

Part 2 in a series on how to create a custom wpf control similar to the calendar control in outlook

Vista DWM Hacking - Capture and Stream D3D/WPF Windows Real-Time

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 23:16:09 GMT

This prototype project uses undocumented Vista DWM calls to get reference to a Direct3D surface the Vista DWM uses to paint windows. The D3D surface is then able to be rendered in a WPF application like a "VisualBrush". Because this is done in the GPU, it is very efficient. The sample application will also let you stream a high quality, high fps capture of your video to Silverlight or Windows Media Player.

WPF Model - View - View-Model Screencast

Sat, 08 Nov 2008 18:46:09 GMT

A really helpful screencast from Jason Dolinger showing how to use the M-V-VM pattern in a simple WPF application. He starts off with the code that a Windows Forms developer might use and refactors it to M-V-VM. Also includes a demonstration of how it is nicely unit testable utilising Moq and how to use the Unity IoC container. 1 hour 30 mins long.

Crack.NET - A runtime debugging and scripting tool for .NET

Tue, 21 Oct 2008 19:16:15 GMT

Crack.NET is a runtime debugging and scripting tool that gives you access to the internals of any .NET desktop application running on your computer. If you love Snoop and Mole for Visual Studio, you'll love Crack.NET, too. Crack.NET allows you to "walk" the managed heap of another .NET application, inspect all kinds of values on objects, and even manipulate those objects via IronPython scripts.

XAML to PNG with server-side WPF

Wed, 22 Oct 2008 08:01:03 GMT

XAML to PNG with server-side WPF sample

Touchless - A webcam multi-touch SDK

Sun, 12 Oct 2008 20:01:02 GMT

That brings us to today, releasing Touchless to the world outside Microsoft, as a *FREE* *OPEN-SOURCE* SDK with a low barrier to entry for developers and users. Touchless makes developing multi-touch capable software easy, and the results can be enjoyed by anyone with a webcam (and some M&Ms :))! Touchless has come a long way, but its journey has just begun. I can imagine a variety of great directions to explore using Touchless. Perhaps support for the forthcoming Windows multi-touch API, video chat white-boarding, implementing mouse/game/hotkey/media control, and designing decked out Minority Report style file/media browsers.

WPF MediaKit - Make your own MediaElement or DirectShow based controls

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 12:02:47 GMT

The WPF MediaKit makes it easy to create your own DirectShow based WPF controls. The library uses the new D3DImage in .NET 3.5 SP1, so the performance is quite decent. It is also open-source and available on codeplex.

YouCube (3D WPF web browser)

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 07:46:59 GMT

As you know, .NET 3.5 SP1 includes a WebBrowser control. The current implementation is just a wrapper around the MSHTML ActiveX control, which unfortunately prevents you from doing crazy things to it through WPF. The ActiveX control itself can be queried for the IViewObject interface and have its Draw method called. The WPF WebBrowser doesn't expose this directly, but fortunately the Windows Forms WebBrowser does (alternatively you could host MSHTML directly)...

The first rule of WPF

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 23:12:57 GMT

How to use attached behaviors to avoid inheritance in WPF.

Silverlight Particle Generator

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 09:31:02 GMT

Cool particle effects live demo done with Silverlight. Sources are available, too!

XNA, Meet WPF

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 00:31:02 GMT

The new D3DImage in WPF opens up worlds for WPF. Direct3D content rendered with WPF...it doesn't get any better! The downside is it seems (correct me if I'm wrong) that Microsoft was only targeting unmanaged Direct3D. Yes there is Managed DirectX, but it seems as if MDX is no longer being maintained and it's not so obvious how to get a D3D surface pointer from the API. It really seems MDX has been left in the dust in favor for XNA, which is a very intuitive D3D wrapper. XNA further exacerbates the issue with XNA and WPF.

Photshop style layer blending in WPF

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 21:31:04 GMT

Pixelshader code for Photshop style layer blending in WPF.

New WPF D3DImage Used for Seamless DirectShow Interop

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 02:48:45 GMT

The D3DImage used in WPF to provide support for pretty much all DirectShow scenarios. So things like DVD playback and webcams are now possible.

ShaderPad - WPF ShaderEffects Workbench

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 17:01:02 GMT

ShaderPad is a application like XamlPad / LinqPad , it is meant to server as WPF ShaderEffects Workbench. The ShaderEffect is a PixelShader based Effect that an be applied to any UIElement in WPF. This feature is available only in .NET 3.5 SP1 . Download it from codeplex

WPF: Binding a ConverterParameter value

Sun, 03 Aug 2008 13:09:52 GMT

It is a shame that ConverterParameter cannot have a Binding as a value.... Yet with some tricks you can actually do this.... Have look for yourself.....

WPF: Reducing CPU consumption for animations « C# Disciples

Sat, 14 Jun 2008 11:46:02 GMT

Lately I've been working on a project at work and the application was performing pretty well. The CPU Usage was below 2% and I was quite happy with it. Then I decided to add a simple animation that continues executing forever. the results 15% CPU consumption . I was amazed at how much CPU was being wasted. Yet I am a stubborn guy and if I want an animation to execute forever, I will do it no matter what..

How to test C# code without running an application « C# Disciples

Fri, 23 May 2008 19:34:16 GMT

One thing that I love about scripting languages is that, to test some code you do not need to create a sample application and run that application. You can simple run the interpreter, write the code you want to test and you get the results. With compiled languages this is harder to achieve. So whenever I need to test something, like for example let's say I want to test what the .ToString()

Effects in .Net 3.5 SP1 for WPF « C# Disciples

Thu, 15 May 2008 22:26:45 GMT

Have you heard? The guys at Redmond impressed the world once again! .Net 3.5 SP1 is now Beta.. If you didn't already, I would suggest that you read this brilliant post from Tim Sneath to get more info on what's new in WPF. Today, I wanted to experiment a bit with the new Effects that were included in the SP1 Beta. These effects are the same as the BitmapEffects that were previously in WPF. One can also say that these are the replacement for the BitmapEffects. Why?

Animation in-depth with Silverlight 2.0 Beta - Part One

Fri, 09 May 2008 22:16:02 GMT

Animation allows us to create attractive user interfaces. Animation is used to apply dazzling effects such as spin a logo or video, make text scroll, make images grow when the mouse is over them etc. Animation is much like varying the property value over time as far as Silverlight 2.0 is concerned. This will be clear if someone takes a closer look at the animated stuff done in Silverlight/WPF applications.

Cool, reusable transitions for WPF

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 14:01:02 GMT

Transitionals is a framework for building and using WPF transitions which provide an easy way to switch between UI views in a rich and animated way. Think of transitions for applications in the same way you think of transitions for video editing. Wipe, Cut, Dissolve, Star, Blinds and 3D Rotating Cube are all examples of transitions supported by the Transitionals framework.

Pimp my ListView

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 21:31:04 GMT

A detailed article on how to create a dat bound ListView, change its header and make it use alternating colors for each row!

Part1: DataGridView For WPF « C# Disciples

Sun, 20 Apr 2008 15:21:49 GMT

In real life we developers deal with a lot of data. Our job is to make this data easily accessible to the user. Unfortunately WPF does not ship with a native DataGrid (at least not for now :D ). A DataGrid is a very handy control to have because you can just feed it a list of objects and it creates columns for each property of the object. On the other hand WPF comes with a ListView, and may I say it is a very good and powerful control. The issue with the ListView is that it cannot auto generate columns for you. Also it does not support sorting or at least does not support it easily . Read more....

Why WPF Rocks (Custom Layout Panel showcase)

Tue, 15 Apr 2008 16:16:08 GMT

This article discuss why WPF Layout model is great... The attached code of some of the best layout panels available on the net is also included (ie. FishEyePanel, FanPanel, TimelinePanel, AnimatingStackPanel, etc)!

Why WPF rock (The content model)

Mon, 07 Apr 2008 20:46:02 GMT

A article comparing the content model in WPf with how it was done in WinForms land!