Month: February 2009

XAML Fest – A Review

Posted on by ARSpaulding

I don’t like giving bad reviews, but when I sent my email in RSVPing a chair at an event called, “XAMLFest” I was expecting to have so much XAML that I’d feel as if I was being assaulted with confetti thrown everywhere – XAML confetti.  Unfortunately, that’s not what we(myself and the other attendees) got.  Instead, we experienced a whole lot of WPF and Silverlight, and I’d gauge about 1/3 of the entire thing was XAML, and most of that third was in the second day.  So for those who did not return after the disheartening first day, they missed out on the bulk of the XAML related content.

If you’re interested in more details, please read on:

Yesterday evening was the ending of the 2 day event, XAML Fest.

This 2 day event boasted through its name a full 2 days of XAML in concentrated form.  After personally attending this event, I’d like to propose a change to the name to “WPF Fest” or something to that effect.

The first day primarily focussed on the model of M-V-VM.  There are links all over the web regarding this, so if you’re curious about this, a google search will guide you in the right direction.  The first day we were knee-deep in c# between the constructors, creating multiple new classes which referenced each other, and having these tie into 5 lines of XAML.  By the end of this day, I was thoroughly frustrated.  Not that I don’t enjoy more information, alternative ideals, and learning more C#, but I’m at this point wondering why this thing is being called “XAMLFest”.  I will mention that towards the end of day 1, there was a bit more touched upon by way of walking us through the interface of Expression Blend and the construct of XAML files.

The second day was Silverlight centered and in as much, quite a lot paralleled the first day, however, there was a considerable level of XAML done in comparison to the first day, including the integration of our silverlight application with a 3rd party control called Blacklight, which is a very nice set of controls made available for download on Codeplex that really were pretty awesome.

After lunch, we dove a lot deeper into the workings of expression blend, customizing buttons and other controls which come with expression blend.  We challenged the blend presentor with questions that he wasn’t exactly comfortable with, but showed us regardless.  The interaction and enjoyment from those in the room definitely escalated during this part of the event, and from there on that tone continued to the end.

So at least it ended with a bang.

I would like to mention that it was definitely worth attending.  There were a few things that I discovered I was doing (as usual) the more difficult way.  Now I have a bit of restructuring to do in a way of preserving the integrety and bringing down pageload time – 2 things that I am always trying to improve upon.

If I were to letter-grade this event, I’d give it a C+

Sitting at XamlFest

Posted on by ARSpaulding

Hey all,

I’m sitting among 45ish people with laptops open and people eating goodies offered to all attending – at microsoft.

The “show” is about to begin.  I’ll be sure to blog about my opinions – have no fear 😛

Notes – 1pm – Day 1: What does XAML say to you?  To me, its design.  User Interface.  Easy to implement markup backing for UI.  So far – the first half of day 1 has been overview of what can be done with WPF and c# w/ it hooked into some very basic XAML.  The crowd that’s here are primarily code-monkeys, so this is certainly targeting the primary audience, but from a designer’s perspective, even one who straddles code a little, the design aspects have been side-comment in mention.

Spoiled by WPF: Silverlight 2 = triggerless!

Posted on by ARSpaulding

Sounds almost like the title of a book.

I’m working on transitions between 1 xaml page and another in silverlight.  Its wired up in c# but I want it to visually appear as though there is a transition between 1 place and another.  Setting the scene, sort to speak.

In a WPF application, you can create an animation, set a trigger and watch the magic when you test the application.

In Silverlight 2 – no such thing.  Instead, I believe C# is how I’ll need to make it happen.  *sigh*

Blend and its Transform tools

Posted on by ARSpaulding

I’ve come to enjoy the power and ease of Blend 2.  But as I become increasingly more familiar to the point of some things almost being second-nature, I begin to encounter limitations and desires for future additions.

One of such additions that I think would be beneficial would be the ability to transform items trapazoidally (is that even a word?).

It allows for rotations, parallelogram transforms, scaling in size – both decreasing and increasing and full flipping vertically and horizontally (great for creating reflections).  However, faking 3D is sort of an artform that I’ve enjoyed and a lot of that has to do with changing the perspective of an object by transforming it into a trapazoid.

There are ways to accomplish this, yes, but not anywhere nearly as swiftly / easily as the other transformations available in blend (unless I’m mistaken and if I am, oh please tell me.  I’ll be ever so excited to be wrong on this one).

Install faster, dangit!

Posted on by ARSpaulding

Next week is XAML Fest, and it occured to me that I should double check to make sure that everything was set up for it on my macbook.  I’d gone through several different installs of Windows 7 before everything was happy and functional and in all of that, I was a bit foggy on whether or not I’d installed everything.

So a quick check shows that I did get Blend installed, but not Visual Studio.

So its now installing.  I know its a huge program but must it take this long?  Ugh!

Nothing substantial to post about, I’m just impatient and blogging about the fact.  Yay!

Color Resources in Expression Blend

Posted on by ARSpaulding

One of the really nice tools that Blend has is the ability to set an item as a color resource for later use.  What this means is that I can set myself a really nice gradient or have a set of colors that I specifically need to stick to (i.e. logo or company colors) and I have those available as a nice resource tool and they’re as easy to designate (some might argue that they’re easier) than a color pallet created in Illustrator.

Well this lovely tool does have limitations where UI is coming into play.

So to describe this, I’m going to talk a bit about the details of my favorite elements (this is something that I geek out about and most step back thinking I’ve gone off the deep side in drama) – the hover, click, and go on buttons ( and objects which have been turned into “buttons” which really aren’t the standard thing that people might consider as a button ).

Something about a button that does more than just a button really gets me hyped.  You hover and it looks nice, you click and it does something, and then the transition between the click and the loading of… whatever.  That sort of thing really gets me hyped.  I guess my girliness shines through there… shiny objects really can entertain me at times.

This is where I find the limitation though in the color resources tool!

Sometimes I’m not the most proactively organized.  I’ll create my button animation effects on the fly.  Sue me for not thinking it ALL the way through.  Unfortunately Blend really does limit you in this.

What I’m refering to needs further example though.  So lets say I’m creating a button.  When my mouse hovers over the button, I want it to DO something to show me that hey, someone’s hovering over this and it has to do something more than just change the cursor to a pointed finger.  So I’m working on this and I come up with this INCREDIBLE gradient that just looks amazing, but its just a bit too dramatic for this button – but I LOVE the color usage.  I want it!

Well now there’s a problem.  See, I want to take those settings and add them to my color resources… but wait, when I try doing this, it just adds the base color used when the button is not actively being interacted with NOT the wonderful gradient created.

…

Very irritating.  I want my gradient of colors for other objects!!!