DotNetSlackers Latest ASP.NET News in Category XAML

GDI+ in a Windows 8 C# Metro Application Experimenting for Fun

the telerik blogs — Wed, 09 May 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Its been about two months since Windows 8 Consumer Preview is out and we, at Telerik, have been enjoying the new framework and all the features it offers. One of the aspects we've been exploring is the immediate mode rendering and what options the new runtime offers. XAML is in the core of WinRT (Windows Runtime) and it offers rich presentation capabilities but sometimes, especially on devices with limited hardware resources, we need to achieve even better performance to get up to the fast and fluid Metro applications' standard.

As I explained in this blog post, Direct2D is undoubtedly the best choice when it comes to presenting heavy visual scenes that are frequently updated. Another immediate-mode rendering option is the WriteableBitmap class where you can directly update pixels on the screen. One of the things that is surprisingly missing in WinRT is the ability to render a XAML UIElement on a WriteableBitmap instance. So, in case you need to use the WriteableBitmap class in your application, the only solution would be to have your own rendering engine that manipulates the pixels of the bitmap. Fortunately, the WriteableBitmapEx solution, by Rene Schulte, has already been ported to WinRT and it can serve your needs.

In this post I want to present yet another (a bit crazy) idea I have about outputting content within a WriteableBitmap instance. And that is as the title states integrating GDI+ within a C# Metro application and using it to present content.

Download the demo

I am a big fan of Windows Forms and GDI+ since the initial release of .NET framework. Its only disadvantage is probably the fact that it is a software rendering engine which does not exploit Display Adapters capabilities. Luckily Native API interoperability is enabled in .NET for Metro Applications and we can call unmanaged methods through the DllImport attribute. So, the idea is to create managed wrappers over some GDI+ methods and use them to draw content in an off-screen bitmap, whose pixels will then be passed to a WriteableBitmap instance.

The wrappers

If you are familiar with Windows Forms and GDI+ then the wrappers in the demo application will look pretty much familiar Brush, Pen, Font, Graphics, etc. Here is an example of how the wrapper of a Brush-object looks like:

public class SolidBrush : NativeObject { private Color color; public SolidBrush(Color color) { this.color = color; IntPtr handle; int result = SafeNativeMethods.GdiPlus.GdipCreateSolidFill(this.color.ToArgb(), out handle); if (result != 0) { throw new InvalidOperationException(); } this.NativePtr = handle; } public Color Color { get { return this.color; } } protected override void DestroyNativePtr() { base.DestroyNativePtr(); SafeNativeMethods.GdiPlus.IntGdipDeleteBrush(this.NativePtr); } }

Each GDI+ object is associated with a native pointer, which is unmanaged and we need to destroy it when the object is being disposed:

public abstract class NativeObject : IDisposable { private IntPtr nativePtr; ~NativeObject() { this.Dispose(false); } protected IntPtr NativePtr { get { return this.nativePtr; } set { this.nativePtr = value; } } public void Dispose() { this.Dispose(true); GC.SuppressFinalize(this); } protected void Dispose(bool disposing) { if (this.NativePtr != IntPtr.Zero) { try { this.DestroyNativePtr(); } catch { throw; } finally { this.NativePtr = IntPtr.Zero; } } } protected virtual void DestroyNativePtr() { } }

Drawing content

We will initialize a Graphics object from a Bitmap and will draw a string on it. First, lets create the needed GDI resources:

private void InitializeGdiResources() { this.gdiBitmap = new Bitmap(PixelWidth, PixelHeight); this.gdiGraphics = Graphics.FromBitmap(this.gdiBitmap); this.gdiFont = new Font("Segoe UI", 32, GdiPlusToMetro.FontStyle.Bold | GdiPlusToMetro.FontStyle.Italic); this.gdiBrush = new SolidBrush(Colors.White); this.gdiStringFormat = new StringFormat(StringFormatFlags.NoClip); this.gdiPen = new Pen(Colors.White, 1); this.writeableBitmap = new WriteableBitmap(PixelWidth, PixelHeight); this.img.Source = this.writeableBitmap; }

Time for some pixels to be output on the screen:

private void RenderText() { RectangleF rect = new RectangleF() { Width = PixelWidth, Height = PixelHeight }; this.gdiGraphics.DrawString(DisplayText, this.gdiFont, this.gdiBrush, rect, this.gdiStringFormat); }

Updating the WriteableBitmaps pixels

Now that we have some content produced we need to update the pixels of our WriteableBitmap instance:

private void EndRender() { byte[] pixels = this.gdiBitmap.GetPixels(); Stream stream = this.writeableBitmap.PixelBuffer.AsStream(); stream.Seek(0, SeekOrigin.Begin); stream.Write(pixels, 0, pixels.Length); this.writeableBitmap.Invalidate(); }

Points of interest

I also performed the same test as in the Direct2D blog post rendering a polyline, consisting of 5000 points, within a 1024*768 rectangle. The results are pretty impressive:

	FPS (frames-per-second)
GDI+ (antialias off)	27
GDI+ (antialias on)	3-4
XAML Polyline	3

A software-rendering engine, that GDI+ is, produces the same results (sometimes even better) than a hardware-accelerated counterpart, which the XAML Polyline is. I definitely think that MS should revisit the Polyline implementation I really cant understand why it is that slow.

Conclusion

I know that some (if not most) of you are wondering: Why would I need GDI+ in my application when I have Direct2D? Well, it is indeed up to you this is just an experiment, which I (and hopefully you :)) find funny and interesting. With this experiment I learned that:

DllImport is supported in .NET for Metro Applications.
You cannot render XAML UI elements within a WriteableBitmap instance.
You can get the WriteableBitmaps PixelBuffer as a stream and write some bytes within it.
Pixel format in WriteableBitmap is BGRA.
GDI+ is at least as fast as XAML regarding line(s) rendering.

Well, thats it, do not hesitate to grab the demo and give it a try. Please note that the set of wrapped GDI+ functionality is limited and its purpose is to fit the demos requirements.

Download the demo

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Slides, Source Code and Video to the Diagramming Framework Webinar Now Available

the telerik blogs — Wed, 09 May 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Introduction

Hello everyone,

I wanted to thank you all for attending the webinar today. As I promised in the webinar all of the materials are now available for you to download and explore on your own. If you have any questions then feel free to send me a tweet or leave a comment below. Id also suggest that you download RadControls for Silverlight and/or WPF if you havent already.

Diagramming Framework Webinar Materials

Slides, Source Code and the Recorded Webinar Video are available right now!

Other XAMLFlix Webinars

Data Visualization : By Evan Hutnick - happened last week and all the materials have been posted to his blog. Go ahead and check it out to see what is happening with the latest XAML Data Visualization components from Telerik.
GridView: By Jesse Liberty - Is coming up on May 15^th @ 11AM EST. You should go ahead and register now to make sure you are getting the most from RadGridView.

What did we cover today?

Getting Started Basics How to create a project using RadDiagram, what files are referenced, and other need to know items.
Items Editing and Manipulation Starting with a blank project, we added items and began manipulating how they appear on screen. We discussed DataBinding, the different connector types, and different CapTypes.
CCPD operations We showed you exactly how you can copy, cut, paste, and delete from RadDiagram. You can even turn off those options if needed!
Pan/Zoom/Resizing/ZOrder We reviewed how you can pan/zoom RadDiagram by code or through the keyboard/mouse. We also discussed how to resize and ZOrder.
Undo-redo We showed you how RadDiagram keeps track of changes made in the diagramming structure.
Align and snap We showed you how you can easily align selected DiagramItems to RadDiagram.
Diagram commands We showed you how to use commands in Buttons to do such things as Align, Snap, Copy and Paste, ShowGridLines, and more.)
- RadDiagram provides a powerful set of 22 RoutedUICommands that help you work with your RadDiagram and its Items easily and build better MVVM applications.
Save/Load serialization We serialized an XML string (and viewed the contents in notepad) then loaded the XML back into RadDiagram.
Virtualization We talked briefly about why you need UI Virtualization and showed how easy it was to turn it off and on. More details below:
Read-Only Diagram We showed you different properties for Controlling the Read-Only State.
Keyboard Shortcuts - For your power users this allows you to trigger commands without using the mouse

Wrap-up

Thanks for watching and if you have any questions or comments then please let me know. Also, before you go, I need your help. Telerik is driven by customer feedback. This is where I need you to tell me what you want to see in the future. Whether it is new controls, additional features or content based off of existing controls, then just drop me a comment in this post or send me a tweet. I will find a proper solution for you.

Also, keep watching the XAMLflix page as we are releasing two new videos series each and every week. You should also go back and watch any videos that you may have missed.

@mbcrump

Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

XAMLflix Introduces RadPropertyGrid

the telerik blogs — Tue, 08 May 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Hello everyone and welcome back to XAMLflix with RadPropertyGrid for Silverlight and WPF. I hope you have been enjoying the series as last week we took a look at RadDragAndDrop and RadMaskedInput.

What is XAMLflix you might ask? Well, it is Teleriks way of teaching you how to use both new and existing controls from Teleriks XAML suite. Each and every Thursday, we will provide a fresh batch of videos and sample projects highlighting a different control. Since our Silverlight and WPF share a common codebase and API, you only have to learn how to use these controls once! You can simply copy and paste the code between frameworks.

Be sure to check out www.telerik.com/xamlflix for all the videos!

Meet RadPropertyGrid

RadPropertyGrid provides an easy and versatile approach to processing data objects' properties. It can be bound to an item with just a single line of code and you may start exploring or editing its properties. The property editor controls are auto generated - text fields for string properties, CheckBoxes for Boolean, DateTimePickers for dates, and so forth.

Getting Started with RadPropertyGrid In this video, we will see how easy it is to bind RadPropertyGrid to a data item then bind it to an existing control such as RadButton. We will also discuss setting up PropertyDefinitions which will allow us to customize the data displayed inside the RadPropertyGrid. (Download the Project)
Working with Nested Properties in RadPropertyGrid In this video, we will explore how to processing nested properties in a tree-like visual structure within RadPropertyGrid. (Download the Project)
Edit Row Details of RadGridView with RadPropertyGrid In this video, we are going to edit the Row Details of RadGridView with RadPropertyGrid. (Download the Project)

Wrap-Up

Thanks for reading (and watching) and if you have any questions or comments then please let me know. Also, keep watching the XAMLflix page as we are releasing two new videos series each and every week. You should also go back and watch any videos that you may have missed.

@mbcrump

Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

Telerik XAMLflix Data Visualization Webinar Wrap-up

the telerik blogs — Fri, 04 May 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Thank you everyone for turning out to Tuesdays XAMLflix Data Visualization webinar, featuring the RadControls for Silverlight and WPF in action. We covered a lot of ground in this webinar, moving at a quick pace to present the wide range of Telerik Data Visualization controls with lots of hands-on coding and examples, but as those who attended can see we didnt even have time to cover them all (yes, we do have that many first class data visualization controls in our toolbox).

A Quick Recap

For anyone who may have missed the webinar, here is a quick recap to entice you to watch the on-demand video:

ChartView Exploring the designer widgets that enable you to quickly generate a Cartesian or Polar chart. Or, if youre brand new to RadChartView this provides a great option for seeing how the different charting elements play together.
DataBars Quick, to-the-point visualizations that provide a bar representing a single value, multiple values, or multiple values in proportion to one another-- complete with a lightweight axis to give a better scope on your data.
Gauge Our newly redesigned Gauge is more fluid and easier to use than ever before. Additionally, in the spirit of ChartView the new Gauge is built using an additive process, meaning you can include as many range markers and indicators as you would like.
Sparklines Similar to DataBars, the Sparklines provide mini-charts that allow you to put more meaning behind smaller groups of data. Whether you need linear, area, scatter, column, or win-loss charts, Sparklines provide quick and lightweight visualizations that can easily be incorporated into your GridView templates.
TimeBar When working with DateTime-based data, TimeBar provides a quick and easy way to visualize large amounts of data over time while offering built-in support for zooming, scrolling, and selection of time spans. It works best when integrated with our Chart and features RadSparklines for visualizing data.
Timeline Another look at DateTime-based data allows you to display both point-in-time data as well as duration-based events, allowing you to visualize (complete with the all-too-familiar zooming and scrolling feature!) events in a linear fashion.
TreeMap/PivotMap Have a large amount of data that can benefit from some visual flair? Tree and PivotMap provide a visual representation of values using relative size, allowing you to see different values as well as offering hooks into the original data for tooltips or other visual customization.
Map We didnt have time to cover RadMap in the webinar, but thankfully I hit upon RadMap via the XAMLflix campaign already, so fear not, there are plenty of videos and projects just waiting to deliver you Mappy goodness online already check em out!

And remember, this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to our RadControls for Silverlight and WPF. But youre in luck! Weve got two more webinars scheduled for the next two weeks being presented by Michael Crump and Jesse Liberty, our resident XAML Evangelists follow this link to register for both.

Call to Action

What, you mean I want you folks to do something after reading all of that?

Most certainly! Telerik is a company driven by customer feedback, so in addition to the XAMLflix campaign we have a few other things in the pipeline to help you make the most of our Silverlight and WPF suites, but when it comes down to it we want to hear from you to know what kinds of resources help you to best adopt and use our controls. So drop me a line in the comments and say Hey Evan, it would rock if you folks could produce XYZ! and well put it in the pipeline. Seriously, right now we are bursting at the seams with XAML Evangelism talent and we want to put it to work for our customers.

Now for the really good stuff check out the on-demand video for the webinar here and feel free to download a copy of the project that I put together from this link. That way you can play along at home and experiment with these controls from the comfort of your workstations.

Thanks and stay tuned for more from the XAML team and XAMLflix!

@EvanHutnick

Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

XAMLflix Introduces RadDragAndDrop

the telerik blogs — Tue, 01 May 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Hello everyone and welcome back to XAMLflix with RadDragAndDrop for Silverlight and WPF. I hope you have been enjoying the series as last week we took a look at RadTreeView and RadDocking.

Be sure to check out www.telerik.com/xamlflix for all the videos!

RadDragAndDrop Drag and Dropping Made Easy!

RadDragAndDrop for Silverlight/WPF allows users to drag any element and drop it onto any other element. The associated events allow users to completely handle the Drag And Drop process, thus easily building complex and flexible business logic. The Drag And Drop Manager allows Drag-Drop operations to be implemented between any two controls. The manager can generate visual cues to help the user and will automatically scroll ScrollViewers to reveal content.

Getting Started with RadDragAndDrop In this video, we will see how easy it is to take two Listboxes and Drag and Drop items between them using RadDragAndDrop. (Download the Project)
Enabling and Customizing the Arrow Cue with RadDragDrop In this video, we are going to enable the arrow cue for your users to easily distinguish between what item is dropped where and customize the color of it. (Download the Project)
Combining the Drag and Drop Framework with RadTabControl In this video, we are going to use the Drag and Drop framework with the RadTabControl. Your user will be able to drag and drop items between tabs quickly and easily. (Download the Project)

Wrap-Up

Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

XAMLflix Introduces RadTreeView

the telerik blogs — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Hello everyone and welcome back to XAMLflix with RadTreeView for Silverlight and WPF. I hope you have been enjoying the series as last week we took a look at the RadZipLibrary and RadTileView Controls.

Be sure to check out www.telerik.com/xamlflix for all the videos!

Meet RadTreeView

The RadTreeView control allows you to display hierarchical structures with a powerful data binding and a load on demand mechanism. It comes complete with the option for checkboxes, icons, multiple selections and a host of other must-have features.

Getting Started with RadTreeView In this video, we will see just how easy it is to work with the RadTreeView control from within your Silverlight and WPF Application. We will display a hierarchical structure and look at Drag and Drop Support built into the control. We will also look at several properties such as the SelectionMode and IsSingleExpandPath.(Download the Project)
Adding Images for Each Item Slate with the RadTreeView RadTreeView gives you the ability to define images for each item state. You can set the default image for a treeview item, set an image when the item is selected and you can also set the image when the item is expanded. In this video, we will take a look at how to do just this. (Download the Project)
UI Virtualization and Loading Items on Demand with the RadTreeView In this video, we will discover that the RadTreeView API supports UI Virtualization, which processes only information loaded in the viewable area, which reduces the memory footprint of the application and speeds up the loading time thus enhancing additionally the UI performance.We will also take a look at the Load on Demand feature as it lets the nodes load their child nodes as the user expands the parent by clicking on the expander icon. (Download the Project 1 and 2)
Implement a Tri-state CheckBox using MVVM with RadTreeView - Some applications use checkboxes that allow an indeterminate state in addition to the two provided by a normal checkbox. This third state is shown as a dash in the checkbox, and indicates that its state is neither checked nor unchecked. This is most often used when the checkbox is tied to a collection of items in mixed states. In this video, we are going to investigate how you would do this using the RadTreeView control and the MVVM Pattern. (Download the Project)

Wrap-Up

Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

Build a WinRT Metro App to Access the Windows 8 File System published in DevProConnections

the telerik blogs — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Hi Everyone,

I hope you are enjoying Windows 8 as much as the team at Telerik is. Matter of fact, we have launched our new Windows 8 Team Blog and have a new post called, Metro, Direct2D and XAML Burst of Performance in Windows 8 But it doesnt stop there, we have a new article published on DevProConnections today called, Build a WinRT Metro App to Access the Windows 8 File System. This article takes a look at what is involved with accessing the Windows 8 file system to create, read, modify and delete files. We also discuss file attributes and the Most Recently Used list in Windows 8. Go ahead and read the introduction below then check out the full article.

Article Introduction

Windows 8 introduces a new native runtime called Windows Runtime (WinRT), which is the backbone of the new Metro user experience in Windows 8. For Windows developers, now is the ideal time to explore the Windows 8 Developer Preview and start working with Windows 8 and WinRT. Because file system access is one of the first things any developer needs to understand when learning a new platform, a good way to help you get your feet wet with WinRT is to use it to build a file systemaccess application. I'll walk you through the process of creating a Windows 8 C# and XAML Metro application and demonstrate how to manipulate files programmatically. After building the app, we'll explore additional file features, including reading file properties and adding a file to the Windows most recently used (MRU) list.

The Full Article

The full article is hosted on DevProConnections and you can access it by clicking here. Dont forget to share it and feel free to leave feedback as I will be watching it.

Thanks for reading!

Michael Crump, XAML Evangelist
@mbcrump

Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

XAMLflix Introduces RadZipLibrary

the telerik blogs — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Hello everyone and welcome back to XAMLflix with RadZipLibrary for Silverlight and WPF. I hope you have been enjoying the series as last week we took a look at the RadHTMLPlaceholder and RadBreadCrumb Controls.

RadZipLibrary Manipulate Zip Files from within your Silverlight/WPF Application.

Have you ever wondered how to increase the responsiveness of your applications by compressing the data that you send over the internet? The RadZipLibrary does just that by allowing you to open, extract from, create and add to Zip files from within your applications.

Reading Zip Files with the RadZipLibrary In this video, we will see just how easy it is to work with reading Zip files from within your Silverlight Application. We will read a zip file and display its contents in the RadGridView Control. (Download the Project)
Writing Zip Files with the RadZipLibrary In this video, we will write to a zip file from a list of files being presented on screen. The user can select which files they wish to add to the zip file and a dialog will be shown asking for the zipped file name. (Download the Project)
Compressing Streams with RadZipLibrary With the new Zip Library you can easily compress and decompress your streams with the preferred compression level. This is useful in instances where you may need to send your stream over the internet. (Download the Project)

Wrap-Up

Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

XAMLflix Introduces RadBreadCrumb

the telerik blogs — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 00:00:00 GMT

It's another Thursday, so by now you are anxiously awaiting the next installment of XAMLflix. Today we're diving into the navigation controls a bit to bring you RadBreadCrumb, a unique control allowing for an experience very similar to the explorer bar that you find in windows. Complete with the ability to display icons, a built-in history journal, and easy support for hierarchical navigation, RadBreadCrumb offers an intuitive way to easily navigate structured data while taking up a minimum of screen real estate.

For a quick recap, XAMLflix = Videos + Projects covering all of the controls in both the RadControls for Silverlight and RadControls for WPF control suites. We are revamping the entire video library with fresh new content based on the latest and greatest versions of our controls, complete with projects so you can grab the same code you see in the video and run with it.

Exploring RadBreadCrumb

You will often run into scenarios in applications where users need to navigate hierarchical structures. One of the dilemmas you will run into with this scenario is that sometimes these structures can be *very* large, making it a bit of a chore to constantly expand tree nodes in hopes of finding the right information. This is a case where the Windows team actually nailed it with the Windows explorer bar, enabling an easy-to-use mechanism for searching through your computer drive structure all while allowing for simple niceties like text search for those of us who are keyboard-happy. Let's see how quickly you can get acquainted with RadBreadCrumb:

Getting Started - In this video we'll explore the basics of RadBreadCrumb. This will cover the overall structure of the control, setting a root item, and what properties you will need to get the hierarchical display showing and functional. (Download the project!)
Extending RadBreadCrumb - Building off of what we learned in the first video, we'll extend RadBreadCrumb by taking advantage of some additional features including adding icons and manipulating the built-in history behavior. (Download the project!)
Integration with RadTreeView - Taking our exploration of RadBreadCrumb one step further, we'll see what it takes to synchronize RadBreadCrumb with RadTreeView to really complete the Windows Explorer experience. (Download the project!)

As you can see, getting setup with RadBreadCrumb as well as integrating it with other navigation controls can be quite easy. Give it a spin in your Silverlight and WPF applications and let us know what you think!

Stay tuned for more from XAMLflix next week!

@EvanHutnick

Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

XAMLflix Introduces RadDataForm

the telerik blogs — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Hello everyone and welcome back to XAMLflix with RadDataForm for Silverlight and WPF. I hope you have been enjoying the series so far. Last week we took a look at two major controls, the RadRichTextBox and RapMap. In todays episode, we will take a look at the RadDataForm and see just easy you can turn arbitrary business objects into a form layout.

Introducing RadDataForm

The RadDataForm provides a way to display and edit arbitrary business objects in a form layout. It provides a basic UI for navigation trough a collection of business objects as well. The built in editors are auto generated by default, so that a fully operational CRUD support may be achieved with a single line of code - just binding to the business object.

Getting Started with RadDataForm In this video, we will dive into Visual Studio 2010 and begin with File -> New Project and discover what the RadDataForm control has to offer. With RadDataForm, you are able to display and edit arbitrary business objects in a form layout with ease. (Download the Project)
Autogenerated and Customized Fields of the RadDataForm In this video, we will see how easy it is to change the field name being displayed, add a description or even change properties based on field selection. We will also take a look at changing the default layout of the RadDataForm. (Download the Project)
Integrate RadDataForm with RadGridView The RadDataForm may be fully integrated with the RadGridView control. In this video, we will add the RadDataForm control to the RowDetails view of the RadGridView control. This will allow the end-user to edit the details of a row quickly and efficiently. (Download the Project)

Thanks for reading (and watching) and if you have any questions or comments then please let me know. Also, keep watching the XAMLflix page as we are releasing two new videos each and every week. You should go back and watch any videos that you have missed.

@mbcrump

Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

Sharpening your Metro C#/XAML projects with DirectX and SharpDX

MSDN: Coding4Fun — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 00:00:00 GMT

I've been keeping on eye on the SharpDX project for a while, waiting on a killer demo. I think I've found it, and in a way I wasn't really expecting. These post details not only how to use SharpDX, but how to use them in a Windows 8 Metro Style app too!First a snip about SharpDX;SharpDXSharpDX is a full DirectX framework for the .NET Platform, including the newest DirectX technology. The top three features of SharpDX:SharpDX is providing the latest DirectX and Multimedia API to .Net with true AnyCpu...

Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

XAMLflix Introduces RadUpload

the telerik blogs — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Its Thursday again, meaning that youre one day closer to the weekend and can happily kick back with another round of videos, brought to you by XAMLflix. This Thursday we are going to focus on RadUpload, a Silverlight upload component with a server-side handler that enables quick and easy uploading from the client. This also includes helpful features like multi-file upload and providing a drop target for dragging files from the desktop to your application.

Getting to Know RadUpload

One of the challenges when working with Silverlight is that the application is running on the client while users expect the same easy server-side communication that you would find in a standard web application, meaning uploading files needs to be a seamless and easy to perform experience. RadUpload provides this out-of-the-box along with the customizability to fit different business scenarios with ease.

Getting Started In this video, see what it takes to get started with RadUpload. This includes setting the required properties on the control for uploading to the correct directory on the server-side as well as how to set up the upload handler. (Project below!)
RadUpload Additional Features Once youve got your feet wet with RadUpload, see how you can easily support features like multiple-file upload, automatic file upload, sending additional parameters alongside uploads, and how to add filters to restrict the types of files that users can upload. (Download the project, includes Getting Started content!)
Using RadUploadDropPanel Now that were comfortable with RadUpload, we will see how we can further enhance the experience by adding a RadUploadDropPanel to our applications. This will allow users to drag and drop files from their desktop to either add them to the upload queue or to automatically upload them to the server. (Download the project!)

So as you can see, RadUpload is a very versatile control that enables you to easily add upload functionality to your applications with only a few lines of code and a fully featured UI.

Stay tuned for more from XAMLflix next week!

@EvanHutnick

Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

Fundamentals of Windows 8 XAML/C# Metro Style Apps

JohnPapa.net — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 00:00:00 GMT

This is a Windows 8 XAML/C# Fundamentals presentation I gave at the Spring 2012 DevConnections conference in Las Vegas. It covers some of the key topics you need to know to get started building Windows 8 XAML Metro apps including styling, animations, invoking the Windows Runtime (WinRT), the intrinsic controls, and more that will help prepare you to develop Windows 8 Metro style apps. View more of my presentations here. Sample code shown in the presentation can be found here. A large number...

Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

Metro, Direct2D and XAML Burst of Performance in Windows 8

the telerik blogs — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Now that Windows 8 Consumer Preview is out we are eager to explore the new framework and the features it offers. While part of it is the good old XAML, there are plenty of other unique features, one of them being the DirectX integration at XAML level. While XAML is a great technology and offers literally unlimited features regarding layout and UI richness, sometimes there are cases where we need to push the framework beyond its limits in order to achieve highly-performing components with responsive and fluid user interaction. Although in most cases writing efficient algorithms and using the proper data structures will be enough to achieve the desired performance, there are scenarios where extensive UI scenes are rendered frequently and the density of the updated pixels is high. So I was most excited by the opportunity to present Direct2D content directly in XAM and started a research on how it actually works and how the performance is affected.

WinRT is a brand new framework and there is little to no information over the Internet about Direct2D and XAML integration, so I decided to summarize my efforts and to hopefully help other people who are doing the same tests. In this post I will show you a simple C++ demo that uses Direct2D and a SurfaceImageSource instance to render a Polyline with 5000 points. Microsoft has done a great job with introducing three different entry points where DirectX content may be directly embedded in a XAML application. The demo also compares the same scenario implemented with a XAML Polyline shape.

Download the Demo

Disclaimer: I am not an experienced C++ developer (still :)), so probably there are areas in the code that might be written in a better way. In fact it is @Tim Heuer and a colleague of his that helped us with a flickering issue we had while performing this test thanks a lot guys!

Initializing the SurfaceImageSource

We will create a SurfaceImageSource that will be passed as a filling of a Rectangle XAML shape.

this->imageSource = ref new SurfaceImageSource(PixelWidth, PixelHeight); IInspectable* inspectable = (IInspectable*) reinterpret_cast<IInspectable*>(this->imageSource); inspectable->QueryInterface(__uuidof(ISurfaceImageSourceNative), (void **)&this->nativeImageSource); ImageBrush^ imageBrush = ref new ImageBrush(); imageBrush->ImageSource = this->imageSource; this->fillTarget->Fill = imageBrush;

Setting-up the DirectX resources

The sample code is taken directly from the MSDN article about DirectX and XAML Interop and modified to fit the demo:

UINT creationFlags = D3D11_CREATE_DEVICE_BGRA_SUPPORT; // This array defines the set of DirectX hardware feature levels this app will support. // Note the ordering should be preserved. // Don't forget to declare your application's minimum required feature level in its // description. All applications are assumed to support 9.1 unless otherwise stated. D3D_FEATURE_LEVEL featureLevels[] = { D3D_FEATURE_LEVEL_11_1, D3D_FEATURE_LEVEL_11_0, D3D_FEATURE_LEVEL_10_1, D3D_FEATURE_LEVEL_10_0, D3D_FEATURE_LEVEL_9_3, D3D_FEATURE_LEVEL_9_2, D3D_FEATURE_LEVEL_9_1 }; ComPtr<ID3D11Device> device; ComPtr<ID3D11DeviceContext> context; D3D_FEATURE_LEVEL m_featureLevel; D3D11CreateDevice( nullptr, // specify null to use the default adapter D3D_DRIVER_TYPE_HARDWARE, 0, // leave as 0 unless software device creationFlags, // optionally set debug and Direct2D compatibility flags featureLevels, // list of feature levels this app can support ARRAYSIZE(featureLevels), // number of entries in above list D3D11_SDK_VERSION, // always set this to D3D11_SDK_VERSION for Metro style apps &device, // returns the Direct3D device created &m_featureLevel, // returns feature level of device created &context // returns the device immediate context ); ComPtr<IDXGIDevice> dxgiDevice; device.As(&dxgiDevice); this->nativeImageSource->SetDevice(dxgiDevice.Get()); // create D2D device context ComPtr<ID2D1Device> d2dDevice; D2D1CreateDevice(dxgiDevice.Get(), NULL, &d2dDevice); d2dDevice->CreateDeviceContext(D2D1_DEVICE_CONTEXT_OPTIONS_NONE, &this->d2dContext); // create brush d2dContext->CreateSolidColorBrush(D2D1::ColorF(D2D1::ColorF::Bisque), &this->brush);

Performing the actual drawing

We will perform the drawing upon each CompositionTarget.Rendering callback so that we can measure the frames-per-second rate:

this->BeginDraw(); D2D_POINT_2F pt1, pt2; float scale = PixelWidth / (float)(PointCount); pt1.x = 0; pt1.y = (float)(rand() % PixelHeight); for(int i = 1; i < PointCount; i++) { pt2.x = scale * i; pt2.y = (float)(rand() % PixelHeight); this->d2dContext->DrawLine(pt1, pt2, this->brush.Get(), 2); pt1 = pt2; } this->EndDraw();

The results

The dimensions of the updated surface are 1024 by 768 pixels. Point count is 5000. Here is a comparison table that summarizes the results:

	Frames per second (FPS)
Direct2D	60
XAML Polyline	~3

Test are performed on my desktop machine quad core, 16 GB RAM.

Pretty impressive - outputting a polyline using Direct2D is about 20 times faster. There are some things however that might need additional attention if you decide to output Direct2D content in your applications. Taking the rendering in our hands implies that we will also take care about the user interaction and hit-testing. We will need to facilitate the ID2D1Geometry interface, track input events and perform some manual hit-testing. Indeed, there will be some more code to be written but the most important thing is that it is doable and if you really need better performance you can achieve it with DirectX.

Conclusion

I really love the option to mix XAML and DirectX content. There are many performance-critical areas in a XAML-based application where you can benefit a lot by using DirectX to present some content. Such areas for example are image rendering and image effects, text rendering and text measuring (you can even measure text on a background thread!) plus much more. The code from the demo application can be easily compiled as a WinMD component that might be accessed from C#. The Windows 8 Runtime (WinRT) is really a powerful framework that provides myriad of unique new features. There are so many new things Ive learned so far that I cant wait to share them with you - stay tuned for more posts on WinRT and Windows 8 to come :)

Download the Demo

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Discovering RadMap with XAMLflix

the telerik blogs — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Its Thursday and were hot off the RadControls for Silverlight and RadControls for WPF service pack releases with the first week of XAMLflix accelerated. Michael posted on RadRichTextBox, we saw the first XAMLflix tutorial from Jesse, and now Im here to round out the week highlighting one of the more mature data visualization components we have in the Silverlight and WPF suites RadMap.

Discovering RadMap

There are a host of reasons for why a line-of-business application would utilize a map be it to showcase regional sales, to pinpoint store locations, or even to provide interactive floorplans or directories. Normally these would require some dramatically different solutions, but thanks to the data visualization wizards here at Telerik you can do all of this with a single control RadMap. Whether you want to utilize routing, searching, and geocoding from Bing Maps, provide a smooth map experience with OpenStreetMaps, or provide a geometry-filled look at floor plans other other location based data, RadMap covers all of these features across the XAML platforms.

Getting Started with RadMap In this video we'll walk through the basic process for getting started with RadMap. This includes taking a look at both the OpenStreetMap as well as Bing Maps providers as well as taking a spin through the end user experience for navigating a RadMap. (Download the project!)
KML Data Support Next up we take a look at RadMap's built-in support for loading KML data from an XML file. This is a quick and easy way to get geographic data displaying along with the ability to add colorization to give more meaning to our data. (Download the project!)
ESRI ShapeFile Support After learning how to work with KML data, we'll see what it takes to get ESRI ShapeFiles into your applications. In this example we'll utilize the MapShapeReader to pull in our shapefile data and see how we can modify the colors on our map to respond to user interactions. (Project with Advanced ShapeFiles video)
Advanced ShapeFiles - Following up on the previous video, we'll take loading ShapeFiles one step further by exploring how we can access the data behind the shape to provide for a more custom experience with RadMap. Along the way we'll also demonstrate how to add custom elements to RadMap. (Download the project!)

Hopefully youve seen here just how quickly and easily you can utilize RadMap to deliver robust functionality to your applications, regardless of the mapping scenario your application requires. And this is only one of the controls from the RadControls for Silverlight and WPF, so be sure to tune into the XAMLflix page to catch up on past episodes and bookmark it for the future!

Stay tuned for more XAMLflix next week!

@EvanHutnick

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XAMLflix presents RadRichTextBox for Silverlight and WPF

the telerik blogs — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Hello everyone and welcome back to XAMLflix with RadRichTextBox for Silverlight and WPF. What is XAMLflix you might ask? Well, it is Teleriks way of teaching you how to use both new and existing controls from Teleriks XAML suite. Each and every Thursday, we will provide a fresh batch of videos and sample projects highlighting a different control. Since our Silverlight and WPF share a common codebase and API, you only have to learn how to use these controls once! You can simply copy and paste the code between frameworks.

RadRichTextBox Think of it as a TextBox on Steroids with a case of RedBull.

The RadRichTextBox control offers broad editing and formatting capabilities which comes with unmatched performance. The RadRichTextBox control provides a MS Word-like editing experience along with support for importing & exporting many different file formats including .docx, .html, .rtf, .xaml and .txt.

Getting Started with RadRichTextBox In this video, we will dive into Visual Studio 2010 and begin with File -> New Project and discover what the RadRichTextBox Control has to offer. With RadRichTextBox, you are able to display and edit rich-text content including formatted text arranged in pages, paragraphs, spans (runs), tables, etc... (download project)
Implementing the RadRichTextBox with the Built-in Wizard In this video, we will see how easy it is to setup and start using RadRichTextBox by utilizing the built-in wizard. The brand new wizard allows you to quickly and easily setup RadRichTextBox in full word processing mode, to simply display text, or anywhere in-between, complete with configuration options to choose ribbon items, add-ons like the ruler and status bar, and features like spell-checking. (download project)
Exporting/Importing the contents of RadRichTextBox The RadRichTextBox allows you to export and import its content. This is useful in case you want to save the user's input into a data base and then load it from there, or if you want to save/load the content of RadRichTextBox to/from a file. (download project)
Searching and Replacing Text in RadRichTextBox RadRichTextBox supports searching the contents of the document along with providing some methods for manipulating the selection. Used in combination, they become quite a powerful tool enabling scenarios like highlighting of specific parts of the document or replacing words and collocations. (download project)
Customizing the Context Menu in RadRichTextBox - The ContextMenu is showed on right click over the RadRichTextBox, and contains some context specific commands arranged in groups. We explore the Context Menu built into RadRichTextBox and add an extra command to the menu that the user can select. (download project)
Working with Styles in RadRichTextBox - RadRichTextBox supports Styles similar to the ones in Microsoft Office. Styles can be created and added to a document programmatically or via the ManageStylesDialog. In this video, we walk you through adding custom styles to the RadRichTextBox control. (download project)
Using the Mail Merge Feature of RadRichTextBox In this video, we will walk you through setting up a Mail Merge with a predefined business letter. We will setup several fields found in a typical mail merge and review the generated word document. (download project)

Wrap-Up

Thanks for reading and if you have any questions or comments then please let me know. Also, keep watching the Telerik blogs as we are planning on releasing new videos for XAMLflix each and every week. Also, feel free to download your own copy of the RadControls for Silverlight and WPF so you can explore the controls we have to offer.

@mbcrump

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XAMLflix Presents RadPDFViewer for Silverlight and WPF

the telerik blogs — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Hello everyone and welcome back to XAMLflix with RadPDFViewer for Silverlight and WPF. What is XAMLflix you might ask? Well, it is Teleriks way of teaching you how to use both new and existing controls from Teleriks XAML suite. Each and every Thursday, we will provide a fresh batch of videos and sample projects highlighting a different control. Since our Silverlight and WPF share a common codebase and API, you only have to learn how to use these controls once! You can simply copy and paste the code between frameworks.

RadPDFViewer Say Goodbye to installing additional software!

The RadPDFViewer control allows you to view PDF documents right within your Silverlight application without the need for an external viewer. You can scroll, pan and zoom PDF files to get a better view of your content.

Getting Started with RadPDFViewer In this video, we will dive into Visual Studio 2010 and begin with File -> New Project and discover how easy it is to begin displaying PDF Files inside the RadPDFViewer control. (Download the projects!)
Using a ToolBar with RadPdfViewer In this video, we will look at adding a Toolbar to the RadPdfViewer control to allow the user to load, zoom and navigate PDF files quickly. (Download the projects!)
Integrating RadRichTextBox with RadPdfViewer - In this video, we will use a RadRichTextBox control to edit data then save the data as a PDF File. We will then use the RadPdfViewer to display the data in the same application. (Download the projects!)

Wrap-Up

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Using a ToggleButton in your XAML Metro style AppBar

Method ~ of ~ failed — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 00:00:00 GMT

If youve been playing around with the Windows 8 Consumer Preview then hopefully youve seen the hundreds of samples provided and downloaded some apps form the store. In a lot of those applications youll notice the common theme of the use of an AppBarthe command bar that shows when you swipe from the top or bottom of the screen. You can also invoke the AppBar by right-clicking or using the Windows 8 keyboard shortcut of Windows key + z to bring it up as well. Picture of the AppBar in the Bing...

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XAMLflix Introduces RadBulletGraph

the telerik blogs — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 00:00:00 GMT

It's Thursday once again and that means we have a fresh new installment of XAMLflix for you. Today we'll be covering RadBulletGraph, a quick and easy to use data visualization component used for comparing several values as well as for showing projections on data, all at a glance.

RadBulletGraph - Quick, Comparative Data Visualization

RadBulletGraph provides you with a quick overview of your data at a glance, offering a quick and easy way to see how a featured value looks versus a comparative value, combined with the ability to place a projection into the mix as well to get the full view of your data. Best of all, setting up a RadBulletGraph can be done in only minutes, bringing your data visualization to the next level with very little effort!

Getting Started with RadBulletGraph - In this video we'll walk you through getting started with the RadBulletGraph control. This will include setting the initial control up, what properties you'll need to know in order to fully utilize the control, and finally how you can switch between orientations for this control to better fit the needs of your application. (Download the projects!)
Customization Options with RadBulletGraph - Once you've started working with RadBulletGraph, one of the next things you will likely want to do is start customizing it to fit the look and feel of your application. In this video I will demonstrate how to modify the colors used within the RadBulletGraph as well as how to add additional comparative measures to fit different business scenarios. (Download the projects!)
Integrating RadBulletGraph with RadGridView - While RadBulletGraph is a great control on its own, it really shines when used in different integration scenarios to provide a better look at your data than just raw numbers alone. In this video you will learn how you can quickly and easily template a RadBulletGraph instance into RadGridView to change the default display to something you can quickly understand and compare at a glance. (Download the projects!)

As you can see, there are a lot of possibilities for what you can do with RadBulletGraph. And this is only one control from the RadControls for Silverlight and WPF, so be sure to tune in to the XAMLflix page to catch up on past and future episodes.

Stay tuned for more from XAMLflix next Thursday!

@EvanHutnick

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Getting Started with GanttView - part 1

the telerik blogs — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Programming with the new GanttView control

As many of you already know with Q1 2012 we introduced a RadGanttView for Silverlight and WPF - a control designed with MVVM-friendly API.

In this blog post we will set-up a sample project with RadGanttView to get you started.

First, to add RadGanttView to a new or existing application we need to add references to the following assemblies:

Telerik.Windows.Controls

Telerik.Windows.Controls.GanttView

Telerik.Windows.Scheduling.Core

Now, lets add the telerik namespace:

xmlns:telerik=http://schemas.telerik.com/2008/xaml/presentation

?nd add a sample definition of the control:

<telerik:RadGanttView/>

Here is a screenshot of what you should see after running the project:

Now, we will create a data source in our ViewModel and bind it to the control: First we will create an observable collection of GanttTask objects

private IEnumerable <GanttTask> tasks;

public IEnumerable<GanttTask> Tasks

{
{
return tasks;
}
{
tasks = value;
OnPropertyChanged(() => Tasks);
}
}

And populate it in the constructor of the ViewModel:

var date = DateTime.Now; var iterationTask = new GanttTask() { Start = date, End = date.AddDays(2), Title = "1/11/2012 - 1/12/2012 Iteration" }; var ganttAPI = new GanttTask() { Start = date, End = date.AddHours(16), Title = "Design public API" };

var ganttDemos = new GanttTask() { Start = date.AddHours(18), End = date.AddDays(1), Title = "Gantt Demos" };
var ganttRendering = new GanttTask() { Start = date.AddDays(1).AddHours(5), End = date.AddDays(2), Title = "Gantt Rendering" };

var milestone = new GanttTask() { Start = date.AddDays(2), End = date.AddDays(2).AddHours(1), Title = "Review", IsMilestone = true };

ganttAPI.SetRelations(new List<Relation>() { new Relation() { Task = ganttDemos } });

ganttDemos.SetRelations(new List<Relation>() { new Relation() { Task = ganttRendering } });

iterationTask.SetChildren(new ObservableCollection<GanttTask>() { ganttAPI, ganttDemos, ganttRendering, milestone });

var gTasks = new ObservableCollection<GanttTask>();

gTasks.Add(iterationTask);

this.Tasks = gTasks;

Now, we will bind the Tasks collection to the TaskSource property of GanttView:

<telerik:RadGanttView TasksSource="{Binding Tasks}"/>

And after running the project we will see the image below:

As you can see the last item is not visible in the task panel, because it is outside the VisibleRange. We can change this by configuring the VisibleRange property of Gantt control.

Configuring the VisibleRange property of Gantt control

To do this we will add a VisbleRange property in the ViewModel:

private VisibleRange visibleRange;

public VisibleRange VisibleRange
{
{
return visibleRange;
}
{
if (visibleRange != value)
{
visibleRange = value;
OnPropertyChanged(() => VisibleRange);
}
}
}

Set it in the constructor:

this.VisibleRange = new VisibleRange(date, date.AddDays(9));

?nd bind it in the XAML:

<telerik:RadGanttView TasksSource="{Binding Tasks}"

VisibleRange="{Binding VisibleRange}"/>

Now, all items are visible:

Configuring the grid panel

Now lets add some more details than Title about the tasks in the grid panel. Lets add their Start and End fields: To do this we should add columns for every tasks property that we want to display:

<telerik:RadGanttView TasksSource="{Binding Tasks}" VisibleRange="{Binding VisibleRange}">

<telerik:RadGanttView.Columns>

<telerik:ColumnDefinition MemberBinding="{Binding Start}" Header="Start" ColumnWidth="140" />

<telerik:ColumnDefinition MemberBinding="{Binding End}" Header="End" ColumnWidth="140" />

</telerik:RadGanttView.Columns>

</telerik:RadGanttView>

Result:

Finally lets allow the editing of Start and End fields by adding a CellEditTemplate. Wed like to use the RadDateTimePicker control, so we will need a reference to Telerik.Windows.Controls.Input.dll assembly as it contains this control.

<telerik:ColumnDefinition MemberBinding="{Binding Start}" Header="Start" ColumnWidth="140" >

<telerik:ColumnDefinition.CellEditTemplate>

<telerik:RadDateTimePicker SelectedValue="{Binding Start}" />

</DataTemplate>

</telerik:ColumnDefinition.CellEditTemplate>

</telerik:ColumnDefinition>

<telerik:ColumnDefinition MemberBinding="{Binding End}" Header="End" ColumnWidth="140">

<telerik:ColumnDefinition.CellEditTemplate>

<telerik:RadDateTimePicker SelectedValue="{Binding End}" />

</DataTemplate>

</telerik:ColumnDefinition.CellEditTemplate>

</telerik:ColumnDefinition>

With this post we setup our first basic project with RadGanttView.

You can download the project here. With next posts we will discover more about how to customize the look and feel of the control, set a theme, configure the TimeRuler and add custom gantt tasks. Meanwhile, you can review our documentation and online demos for more details how to configure the GanttView.

Stay tuned!

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