just wanted to thank all yall who sent me invites to popfly… Im in and having fun with it!

Been feeling like I haven’t had much in the way of valuable posts lately… Mostly just links that I find interesting… Been a victim of having too many cool projects and training gigs lined up…

One thing I like about training ops is it always uconvers some interesting scenarios that “should” be easy but really isn’t.

For example in a training we did earlier this year, there was a request to create a simple tab control that displayed its tab items on the left and right but did so with 90 degree text. Seemed like it should be easy with a layout transform but it actually took a bit of futzing to get it right… In the end it wasnt really hard.

http://www.designerslove.net/samples/VerticalTabItems.xaml

You might notice in the system tab control that there is a TabStripPlacement property that allows you to place the position of the tabpanel to the different sides but the text stays horizontal. If you use TabStripPlacement in simple styles nothing happens because nothing in the triggers was designed. I have extended the Simple Styles (sorta… this is a combo of editing a copy of the standard TabControl template and extending the Simple Styles TabItem.)

Potentially it might have been better to create a single TabItem custom control that has a new custom property called TabDirection… But for now I have two different styles for TabItem… it’s a little bit more cumbersome this way because when you change the look of the tab you have to update it in two places rather than one.

Check out the XAML shield that is being passed around… Thought I would post some context and give some tidbits of information…

Many many moons ago Peggi Goodwin popped in my office and asked if I could create icons for the many different types of XAML formats (including baml, xaml, .application, browser hosted applications now .xbap, and straight wpf .exe…)… The caviat they had to be done tomorrow… And they had to support all the resolutions that windows needed…

I ended up using Gamani’s icon editor as that was the only editor that supported XPs higher resolution icons at the time.

We didnt have any input about what the icon should be but I wanted to do something that tied the icon to the “Avalon” code name for WPF and had some relationship to the “front end” so I came up with the idea of a multi colored shield that uses the Windows colors. Unfortunately there was a big problem with that… We didnt get approval to use the Windows Colors which was an MS corporate branding no no… Of course we didnt find that out until after we had geeky t-shirts and some really cool navy blue wool caps created with embroidered windows colored shields… Corporate branding got on us pretty hard and we spent about a year trying to get the colored shield to go away with very limited success.

Ironically the windows colored shield became the defaul iconization for the Windows Security Center introduced in XP SP2. I still contend we had dibs on it but hey they made a much better looking shield icon than what I had at the time.

So to fix the windows color issue we opted for a nuetral blueish purple color that has stuck to this day.. In fact it shipped in .NET Frameworks 3.0 in a few places where it didnt get cleaned up :-S

Today the Windows design team created a fantastic XAML icon (in my opinion at least… I love the box in brackets concept) A while back Rob Relyea wanted a vector version and I had created a version of that… Here it is http://www.designerslove.net/XAML/WPFIconCanvas.xaml

Congrats to Times Reader for making it to #24  on the PCWORLD The 100 Best Products of 2007

Fun quote: “…as clickable as a Web page but as readable as print…”

Another interesting article that I think is abstractly related to great reading experience… Origami 2.0 Smaller, lighter, more powerful ultra mobile devices that can support wpf reading experiences…

Oh and Kurt is on channel 10 talking blendables. Cool demo of stuart mayhews use of ElementSnapshot.

There are two things I really want in this world right now…  A silverlight skateboard and and alpha invite to Popfly.

.NET legos… How cool is that? David Kelley is probably in heaven right now.

Havent watched it yet but if its anything like Kurt’s shoes made out of baseball’s then its gotta be fun and interesting…

http://visitmix.com/Blogs/Joshua/identitymine/

I love WPF… However Silverlight is a much cooler name than WPF and I think the lack of a cool name hurts WPF’s street cred. (see Kurts post)

I thought through why WPF/E was named Silverlight and came up with conclusion that the appropriate moniker for WPF would be “Goldheavy” but that just sounds lame…

How about “HeavyMetal”? Now thats a name I could get behind.

Here is the source code for a sample that I was going to demo at Mix but we ran out of time.

http://blendables.com/files/folders/samples/entry49.aspx

I will follow up with more tutorial info but in the meantime its a very simple sample… It switches the template on a control based on the width of the root window element in the application.

I realize the template switching in reading experiences like newspaper front pages is a much larger problem than I solve here but this is an incredibly useful tool for me to build solutions that require switching based on window size.

 Here is the quick run down of the sample:

//First you need to add references to blendables essentials or this wont work at all. Notice that I have given the Window element an x:Name of RootWindow :

<Window
xmlns=”http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation”
xmlns:x=”http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml”
xmlns:blendables=”http://schemas.identitymine.com/blendables”
x:Class=”TheOldSwitcheroo.Window1″ x:Name=”RootWindow” Title=”The Old Switcheroo”
Width=”500″ Height=”500″>
<Window.Resources>

//Next I define the two different control templates I want to switch between:

<ControlTemplate x:Key=”ControlTemplate1″ TargetType=”{x:Type Control}”>
<Grid>
<Ellipse Fill=”#FF4D6AA4″ />
</Grid>
</ControlTemplate>

<ControlTemplate x:Key=”ControlTemplate2″ TargetType=”{x:Type Control}”>
<Grid>
<Rectangle Fill=”#FFB43C3C” />
</Grid>
</ControlTemplate>

//Then I define a NumericRangeObjectMap resource that says when the value is 0 – 650 use ControlTemplate1 and When it is 650 to infinite use ControlTemplate2.

<blendables:NumericRangeToObjectConverter x:Key=”NumericRangeToObjectConverter”>
<blendables:NumericRangeObjectMap From=”0″ To=”650″ Value=”{StaticResource ControlTemplate1}” />
<blendables:NumericRangeObjectMap From=”650″ Value=”{StaticResource ControlTemplate2}” />
</blendables:NumericRangeToObjectConverter>

</Window.Resources>
<Grid x:Name=”LayoutRoot”>

//Then I call the converter in the Template property of my control and pass it an ElementName of RootWindow and a Path of ActualWidth.

<Control x:Name=”TemplateSwitcherControl”
Template=”{Binding Path=ActualWidth, Converter={StaticResource NumericRangeToObjectConverter}, ElementName=RootWindow}”/>
</Grid>
</Window>

If you havent downloaded it yet do so now! Very cool FlipTile3D rocks! TransitionPresenter is off the chain (sorry stole that from Mike Harsh)… Gotta give it some performance tests to see how I like it full screen but I gotta say the Horizontal Wipe is StarWarsErrific!

http://work.j832.com/

More proof that WPF is a ripe platform for developing rich multimedia graphic novels… It looks like Im way behind the times though as there is a very good looking graphic novel called “The Many Worlds of Jonas Moore” coming that will be delivered via iPod. This totally upholds my “comfort” argument about reading experiences moving to devices. Wierd question is when will they have a larger iPod that focuses on reading experiences. Im really excited about developing reading experiences for Ultra Mobile PCs but not as excited about developing reading experiences for mobile devices like phones where the form factor dictates that reading is a secondary experience.

 Unfortunately the current delivery experience was very “web” and left me watching some well thought out live action sequential art in a 320×240 experience that studdered because there was a bandwidth bottleneck… Very frustrating to see something like this get trashed in the medium.

Still worth a look see http://www.jonasmoore.com