Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

WPF Direct3D Interop

Wednesday, May 28th, 2008

There are some very interesting posts I missed the last days. Since .NET 3.5 SP1 perfectly integrates WPF with DirectX, a number of cool effects can finally be applied: http://www.codeproject.com/KB/WPF/WPFPixelShader.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/greg_schechter/archive/2008/05/12/introduction-to-writing-effects.aspx http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2008/05/12/visual-studio-2008-and-net-framework-3-5-service-pack-1-beta.aspx Some of those effects were on Dax Pandhi's wish list for WPF (http://blog.nukeation.com/post/My-wishlist-for-the-next-release-of-WPF.aspx) for quite some time. More importantly, the integration of WPF ...

A MenuKiller Control - Draft

Sunday, May 4th, 2008

This is just a draft on my upcoming article. I have asked a number of WPF Gurus to help me out on this... Introduction In an effort to take user experience to the next level, designers have come up with ideas on how to solve old problems in a new way. In ...

Prism 10933

Wednesday, April 30th, 2008

A new Prism drop has just been released: http://www.codeplex.com/prism/SourceControl/DownloadSourceCode.aspx?changeSetId=10933 The current prism drop comes with a neat documentation. Unfortunately, I won't be able to check it out for the next few days... The StockTraderRI now looks like this: .

Protected: A MenuKiller Sample Application

Tuesday, April 15th, 2008

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ICommand.CanExecute() and NullReferenceException

Thursday, April 10th, 2008

Have you ever tried to call ICommand.CanExecute()? It actually works fine, but only if you are not as naive as I am... Simply calling it without the proper know-how might result in a NullReferenceException, so what you should read is how to implement ICommandSource. See MSDN: How To: Implement ICommandSource MSDN: Implement ...

On UIElement.Opacity and the Removal of Storyboards

Thursday, April 10th, 2008

Today, I encountered two WPF related problems: 1 - UIElement.Opacity and the way it is being 'inherited' Every UIElement has an Opacity property, which will we be used when rendering the control. When rendering an object, 0.0 means the object is fully transparent, thereby invisible to the user, while 1.0 means it ...

Applying ItemContainerStyle Recursively

Monday, April 7th, 2008

In the MenuKiller Control, I need to configure a TreeView to quite some extent: I want all nodes to have a certain custom ItemContainerStyle. First naive approach: The TreeView will apply its ItemContainerStyle to all nodes. Wrong! The TreeViewItems themselves are ItemControls, therefore having their own ItemContainerStyle. Second approach: Have the ...

The MenuKiller Control - Differentiated UX

Monday, April 7th, 2008

A while ago, I read a very interesting blog post: Rethinking the Button by Dax Pandhi. It really fascianated me, so I started some research on the topic. Apparently, "Differentiated UX" is the new buzzword. As is always the case with buzzwords, different people understand it in different way, but I guess ...

Krzysztof Cwalina on API Design

Sunday, April 6th, 2008

This is a rather old one (dated June 1st 2007), but I feel this one deserves it: A three-hour webcast by FxCop creator Krzysztof Cwalina who now works at Microsoft on the design of APIs, a little post mortem on the development of the .NET Framework, etc. You can download the not-so-small ...

New Prism Drop!

Thursday, April 3rd, 2008

Again, there is a new drop for the Prism Reference Implementation. Get it here: http://www.codeplex.com/prism/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=12226 At the current release intervals, it's hard to keep up ;-)