Introducing the Blend Class Attribute Editor for HTML
Published by on 27.06.2012 at 22:57

Managing the complexity of interwoven HTML and JavaScript can be a demanding task for designers.  One way Blend supports designers is by providing a visual indication in the CSS Properties and HTML Attributes panes when JavaScript values have been set or have overwritten values assigned in markup. This works well for the majority of attributes and properties that take a single value.  However, the class attribute can be assigned a list of space-separated class names.  In JavaScript, the list of class names can be appended to, prepended to, overwritten, deleted, or otherwise arbitrarily modified.  Sometimes, multiple JavaScript functions will modify the class attribute of the same element in different ways. Understanding the interactions between HTML markup and JavaScript is crucial during development and can help with debugging when things aren’t displaying as expected.

Enter the Blend Class Attribute Editor for HTML

Blend includes a nifty value editor specifically designed for the HTML class attribute.  You can use it to add, edit, and remove class names for selected elements.  More importantly, you can see a visual indicator for each class name that indicates its state.

Blend Class Attribute Editor



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Document Toolkit June 2012 Update
Published by on 25.06.2012 at 15:44

A maintenance release of Document Toolkit is now available. See the release notes for the list of changes in this June 2012 Update (v2.5.2).

Download

The download link of Document Toolkit June 2012 Update is available on the download page. Alternatively you can install the Document Toolkit package using NuGet. See also the NuGet instructions.

About Document Toolkit

Document Toolkit for Silverlight is a fast, feature-rich and 100% client-only document viewer library for Silverlight. Document Toolkit offers a range of features that enables easy document access and document display in Silverlight and LightSwitch applications.

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SQLite on Windows 8
Published by on 21.06.2012 at 13:11

sqlite370_bannerThe amazing little SQLite database engine now officially supports Windows 8 Metro style applications. It sounds like this was done with the full endorsement of Microsoft so you should have no trouble including it in your Metro style apps and get the blessing of our friendly Windows Store custodians. I believe this covers Windows Phone 8 as well. Here is the news:

SQLite version 3.7.13 adds support for WinRT and metro style applications for Microsoft Windows 8. The 3.7.13 release is coming sooner than is usual after the previous release in order to get this new capability into the hands of developers. To use SQLite in a metro style application, compile with the -DSQLITE_OS_WINRT flag. Because of the increased application security and safety requirements of WinRT, all database filenames should be full pathnames. Note that SQLite is not capable of accessing databases outside the installation directory and application data directory. This restriction is another security and safety feature of WinRT. Apart from these restrictions, SQLite should work exactly the same on WinRT as it does on every other system.

Thanks D. Richard Hipp!

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Rendering Linear Gradients using the HTML5 Canvas
Published by on 21.06.2012 at 02:36

Related HTML5 Canvas Posts: Gradients are everywhere. They’re used to enhance toolbars or buttons and help add additional flare to a web page when used appropriately. In the past we’ve always had to rely on images to render gradients which works well, but isn’t necessarily the most efficient (although 1 pixel wide images do work well). CSS3 provides a great way to render gradients in modern browsers (see http://www.colorzilla.com/gradient-editor for a nice online gradient generator tool) but it’s not the only option. If you’re working with charts, games, multimedia or other HTML5 Canvas applications you can also use gradients and render them on the client-side without relying on images. In this post I’ll introduce how to use linear gradients and discuss the different functions that can be used to create them.       Read the full post

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Rendering Text with the HTML5 Canvas
Published by on 18.06.2012 at 20:57

In a previous post I walked through the fundamentals of rendering shapes such as squares and circles using the HTML5 Canvas API. In this post I’ll provide a simple example of rendering and rotating text. To render text you can use the fillText() or strokeText() functions which take the text to render as well as the x and y coordinates of where to render it. To rotate text you can use the transform functions available with the HTML5 Canvas such as save(), rotate(), and restore(). To run the live demos that follow click the Result tab in the blue bar of each demo.  

Rendering Text

This example provides a simple look at how text can be rendered using the HTML5 Canvas. It iterates through a loop, updates the text and font size dynamically, measures the width of the text using the measureText() function, and then calls fillText() to render the text with the desired font size to the screen.

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RTM Release XAML Spy
Published by on 18.06.2012 at 13:12

First Floor Software is proud to announce the RTM release of XAML Spy. XAML Spy is the visual runtime inspector for Silverlight, Windows Phone and WinRT XAML applications. This v1 XAML Spy release marks the end of the preview release cycle. As of today you can purchase XAML Spy licenses in the XAML Spy store.

Silverlight Spy upgrade path

Now that XAML Spy has been released, you can upgrade Silverlight Spy to XAML Spy. If you have purchased Silverlight Spy less than one year ago, you can even upgrade for free! As a licensed Silverlight Spy user you can upgrade to XAML Spy. If your license has not expired, you can use your Silverlight Spy license key in XAML Spy and XAML Spy will work as a full version. A license has expired when its issue date is more than year before the XAML Spy release date. For the XAML Spy RTM release all Silverlight Spy licenses issued on or after June 15, 2011 are valid. If your Silverlight Spy license has expired, contact us for an upgrade discount. Please include the reference number of the original purchase in your message.

Links

XAML Spy RTM Release XAML Spy website

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It’s Alive! – WriteableBitmapEx 1.0 for WinRT Metro Style, WPF, Windows Phone and Silverlight
Published by on 14.06.2012 at 16:13

After a few preview versions, I'm happy to announce that the final version of WriteableBitmapEx 1.0 is now available. A couple of weeks ago we added official WPF support and WinRT Metro Style support. With that WriteableBitmapEx is now available for 4 platforms: WPF, Silverlight, Silverlight for Windows Phone and Metro Style WinRT .NET. You can download the binaries here or via the NuGet package. The packages contain the WriteableBitmapEx binaries. All samples and the source code can be found in the repository. Since the last WinRT preview version, a new WinRT sample was added, a couple of bugs were fixed and a new FromStrean method was added which loads an image stream into a WriteableBitmap. The project was also updated for the Windows 8 Release Preview. Please read this blog post for more details (about the WinRT version).


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Video Demo: Editing GroupStyles in Blend and VS 2012
Published by on 13.06.2012 at 22:56

A number of Metro style apps use a hierarchical system of navigation. This is an intuitive and common pattern used by app developers.  In this video tutorial, I’ll show you how to style and customize GroupStyles using Blend and VS to implement the hierarchical navigation system.
Get information about navigation design for Metro style apps and other design guidance in the Design Center on the Windows Developer center.
Apps that have a large amount of content organized into categories or groups benefit from using the hierarchical navigation pattern. The entry point for the user in this pattern is the hub page. The content here is displayed in a rich horizontally panning view with different categories of content In XAML the GridView and ListView controls are primarily used to display data in the Hub page owing to their rich set of built in features and behaviors that make them a perfect fit for this scenario. These controls contain GroupStyles which define the look and feel of each category\group in these controls.

GroupStyle layout illustration

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The Windows 8 Store is HOW BIG?
Published by on 13.06.2012 at 09:45

We've heard about how the Windows 8 Store will be the "largest developer opportunity, ever," given the sheer number of Windows 7 licenses and the expected number of people upgrading and purchasing Windows 8 tablets. I wanted to share some of my metrics so far with the Windows Store...   Physamajig for Windows 8 has reached a bit of a milestone with over 100,000 downloads on the Store! It took a little over 3 months to reach this milestone... but note that this is just the preview versions of Windows 8!     Here are a few more metrics from Physamajig, showing download peaks, market, and age group...       Read the full post

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New Pluralsight Course: HTML5 Canvas Fundamentals
Published by on 13.06.2012 at 05:20

  I just finished up a new course for Pluralsight titled HTML5 Canvas Fundamentals that I had a blast putting together. It’s all about the client and involves a lot of pixel manipulation and graphics creation which is challenging and fun at the same time. The goal of the course is to walk you through the fundamentals, start a gradual jog into the API functions, and then start sprinting as you learn how to build a business chart canvas application from scratch that uses many of the available APIs . It’s fun stuff and very useful in a variety of scenarios including Web (desktop or mobile) and even Windows 8 Metro applications. Here’s a sample video from the course that talks about building a simple bar chart using the HTML5 Canvas:   Additional details about the course are shown next.     Read the full post

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