Open in Expression Blend - switch between 2 and 3

Since Silverlight 3 is available, Blend 3 Preview was also released. When installing Silverlight 3 tools it is no longer available to create Silverlight 2 applications. Thanks to Amy Dullard who created an awesome batch file/deinstaller/installer script it makes life a lot easier.

The only thing that was bugging me was Expression Blend 2 and 3. Although the Silverlight 2 tools are installed, once installed, Blend 3 is the preferred application when using the "Open in Expression Blend" option in the context menu in VS2008.
After some searching in the registry I found out that it was the following key that did the mapping:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Expression\Blend\VS]

I created 2 registry files, 1 for going from Blend 2 to Blend 3 and one for going from Blend 3 back to Blend 2. It doesn't install/uninstall anything, it just changes the value in the registry.

So after I created the registry files and copied them to the folder of the batch file that Amy created, I added the following command(s) to the corresponding batch files:
reg import Blend3-to-2.reg
reg import Blend2-to-3.reg

Now, when switching between Silverlight 2 and 3 the "Open in Expression Blend" option also switches to Blend 2 for Silverlight 2 and Blend 3 Preview to Silverlight 3.

NOTE: I created this and only tested it on a 64 bit machine. I did include x86 version of the registry keys but these are untested!

Sometimes being lazy is a good thing, right? :)

Download the registry key files

Automatically translate your Silverlight Application

Get the source now (58Kb)

UPDATE: Thanks to my colleague Emile van Ewijk who pointed out the the is keyword in C# does the same as the extension method that was used, I could refactor and optimize the code. So the source is updated. Thanks, Emile! (and shame on me for not knowing that...)

Let me start by saying that I’m no great fan of automatic translations. I rarely come across an automatically translated text that makes sense :)

As most of you know, I’m Dutch. That’s why my English sux ;). When I was at MIX09, where I met all of these great people, I also received a flyer in my goodie bag of Microsoft Live Translator. Since we, at Amercom, work for some international clients and create multilingual sites this attracted my attention.

And since everyone seems to be blogging on the new features of Silverlight 3B1 I figured, why not do it in plain old Silverlight 2 :P

Preparing your website for multilanguage in Silverlight

First thing I noticed when working with the Cultures in Silverlight (which most of you probably already know) was that the culture did NOT respond to the language settings of the browser. After some research I came across an article on MSDN library that said:

“The .NET Framework for Silverlight provides data for the invariant culture, but it retrieves information about all other cultures from the operating system. This means that the information that is available to a specific culture may differ across operating systems or even across versions of the same operating system.”

IMHO it is a mistake not to read the browser settings by default, but using the OS settings. There must be a pretty good reason for this, but I can’t think of it.

Anyway, to make sure your Silverlight 2 application responds to the settings of the browser, 2 configuration steps are necessary:

1. If you’re using an ASP.NET website/web application, set the following tag in the system.web section of the web.config:

2. Set the following parameters in the object tag of the silverlight control in the ASPX page (ASPX is needed for this functionality):

<param value="<%=System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture.Name %>" name="Culture" />
<param value="<%=System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentUICulture.Name %>" name="UICulture" />

Once you’ve done that, you’ll be able to use the System.Globalization.CultureInfo.CurrentCulture and System.Globalization.CultureInfo.CurrentUICulture properties to retrieve the language set in the browser’s language settings.

What I wanted to achieve with my application is that I wanted to do nothing more then call a single method which takes a Panel control and goes through the children. It should be able to identify the type of control and should check the content for strings that can be translated. One thing that is not working in the sample application is controls that are contained in other controls than those that are derived of a Panel. So controls added to a Button.Content won’t be translated, but I doubt it will be difficult to add that functionality as well.

Adding the Live Translator

To add the Live translator to our application we only need to add a reference to the webservice they created. However, to use the webservice you also need to request an App_Id. You can create an app_id on the following website: http://search.live.com/developers/appids.aspx

On the previously mentioned site there is also more information available on the Live Translator service (API documentation, etc.). I created a constant which contains my app_id so I can easily reuse it through my entire class.

For the webservice, app_id and the source language I created the following fields/const:

private readonly LanguageServiceClient _languageServiceClient = new LanguageServiceClient();
private const string APP_ID = "7BAAE0482B3EA27295D38DA669A42E0F57B56B57";
private const string SOURCE_LANGUAGE = "en";

NOTE: the SOURCE_LANGUAGE should contain the TwoLetterISOLanguageName of the culture you want to use as the source for the translation. I chose English which means that all of the text I use in my Application should be added as English text. Translator should, in some cases be able to detect the language, but since we’re using single words in our application like “Upload” or “Download” I won’t rely on the automatic detection.

In my Page constructor I created a few basic Eventhandlers and a call to the translate method we will create in a moment:

_languageServiceClient.TranslateCompleted += _languageServiceClient_TranslateCompleted;
if(System.Globalization.CultureInfo.CurrentCulture.TwoLetterISOLanguageName != SOURCE_LANGUAGE)
{
 DoTranslateElements(TranslateGrid);
}
ReTranslate.Click += ReTranslate_Click;

Create the DoTranslateElements method

We can use: if (element is TextBox) to check if the element is a TextBox or derived from the type.

Now for the DoTranslateElements method, the most imprtant thing that is done here is the following:

foreach (var element in parent.Children)
{
 //contentcontrol elements (button, etc)
 if (element is ContentControl)
 {
  ContentControl contentControl = element as ContentControl;
  if (contentControl != null)
   if (contentControl.Content is string)
   {
    _languageServiceClient.TranslateAsync(
     APP_ID, 
     contentControl.Content.ToString(), 
     SOURCE_LANGUAGE, 
     System.Globalization.CultureInfo.CurrentCulture.TwoLetterISOLanguageName, 
     contentControl);
   }
 }

 //elements which contain children
 if (element is Panel)
 {
  //recursive call
  DoTranslateElements(element as Panel);
 }

 if (element is TextBlock)
 {
  TextBlock textBlock = element as TextBlock;
  if (textBlock != null)
   _languageServiceClient.TranslateAsync(
    APP_ID,
    textBlock.Text,
    SOURCE_LANGUAGE,
    System.Globalization.CultureInfo.CurrentCulture.TwoLetterISOLanguageName,
    textBlock);
 }

 if (element is TextBox)
 {
  TextBox textBox = element as TextBox;
  if (textBox != null)
   _languageServiceClient.TranslateAsync(
    APP_ID,
    textBox.Text,
    SOURCE_LANGUAGE,
    System.Globalization.CultureInfo.CurrentCulture.TwoLetterISOLanguageName,
    textBox);
 }
}

What is actually done here is loop through all of the elements in a Panel and:

1. If the element is a button, check if content is a string, than translate 2. If the element is a textblock or textbox, translate the text property value 3. If the element is a Panel, call the method itself again (recursive call)

What needs to be noticed is that I use the UserState property to send the object that is translated (button, textblock, etc) to the webservice. This object is returned in the TranslateCompleted event as you will see in the next section.

That is basically it. Now all of the (async) calls to the webservice are made and we only have to catch the TranslateCompleted event and set the correct content in the correct control property.

The TranslateCompleted event

In this event we need to retrieve the data which is returned from the webservice and set it in the corresponding property.

var element = e.UserState;
 if (element is ContentControl)
 {
  ContentControl contentControl = e.UserState as ContentControl;
  if (contentControl != null)
  {
   contentControl.Content = e.Result;
  }
 }

 if (element is TextBlock)
 {
  TextBlock textBlock = e.UserState as TextBlock;
  if (textBlock != null)
  {
   textBlock.Text = e.Result;
  }
 }

 if (element is TextBox)
 {
  TextBox textBox = e.UserState as TextBox;
  if (textBox != null)
  {
   textBox.Text = e.Result;
  }
 }

That's it! Now we get an automatically translated version of our application. I created a couple of buttons and a textblock - and box to test it. I also nested a few controls in a Grid and a Canvas which also worked fine. I have no more space on my personal site, so I can't get a demo online right now, but the source is available: Get the source now (58Kb) Hope this helps!

Dag 2 op MIX09

De 2e dag op MIX begint met een, voor ons, wat minder interessante keynote. De eerste helft is prima, daar wordt namelijk de nieuwste versie van Internet Explorer officieel gereleased (versie 8).

Het 2e gedeelte is een keynote van Deborah Adler. Zij is een designer die, nadat haar oma bijna overleed door het nemen van verkeerde medicijnen (die van haar man), een verbeteringsslag heeft gemaakt voor medicijnlabels en verpakkingen zodat de informatie over de medicatie eenvoudiger en duidelijker wordt. Op zich wel interessant, maar het had niets met internet te maken. Wel een erg mooi verhaal want haar ideeën zijn opgepikt door Target en zij hebben haar geholpen het product te verfijnen en hebben het daadwerkelijk op de markt gebracht.

Verder hebben we sessies gezien van Blend 3, ASP.NET vs MVC framework en The Best Video and Photography on the Web in Silverlight. De 2e sessie was minder interessant dan de andere 2. Maar in die periode waren er niet veel andere interessante sessies, dus de keuze was wat beperkt.

Tussen de middag hebben we gelunched met Martin Tirion en een collega van hem van Microsoft. Ik liep vandaag nog een aantal andere mensen tegen het lijf: Page Brooks van o.a. SilverlightContrib, Koen Zwikstra, Dave Campbell.

 

‘s Avonds de party @ Lavo gehad. De party zelf was niet echt een succes, maar we hebben wel de hele avond leuk en constructief kunnen spreken met Martin Tirion van Microsoft. Al met al dus weer een geslaagde dag geworden.

De laatste dag, dag 3 beloofd weer een aantal leuke sessies. Na de sessies gaan we waarschijnlijk lekker bij het zwembad zitten, want het weer is vrijdag nog goed. Vrijdagavond gaan we waarschijnlijk naar Freemont street, zaterdag is het weer wat minder dus dan gaan we de stad in.

Dag 1 op MIX09

Dag 1 was erg verassend, interessant en erg gezellig.

We hebben bij de keynote een aantal aankondigingen gehoord, waaronder Silverlight 3 beta 1 wat wel de verwachting was.
Andere releases die gisteren plaatsvonden zijn:

Commerce Server 2009

Expression Blend 3 preview

Superpreview

 

SuperPreview

Superpreview is een applicatie die in de nieuwe versie (3) van Expression Web zit. Het is ook een losse applicatie, dus Expression Web is niet nodig om deze tool te gebruiken. De tool kan worden gebruikt om geknipte HTML in meerdere browser te testen. Hierbij kun je vensters waarin de schermen worden weergegeven als bijvoorbeeld IE6 en FF3 over elkaar heenleggen (semi transparant) zodat je makkelijk de verschillen kunt zien.

Het lijkt op het eerste gezicht een erg mooi hulpmiddel om de HTML in diverse browser er hetzelfde uit te laten zien. Zelfs testen van browsers op de MAC is hiermee mogelijk doordat er gebruik wordt gemaakt van servers op het internet. Hoe dit exact werkt weten we nog niet, maar we hebben de tool meegekregen op een memorystick, dus thuis kunnen we het uitproberen.

De versie die nu is gereleased geeft alleen nog de mogelijkheid voor IE 6 t/m 8. De andere browsers en platformen zullen snel volgen.

Expression Blend 3 preview

Waar ik zeer verrast door was, was de nieuwe features in Expression Blend. Ze hebben een mogelijkheid toegevoegd om te sketchen in Blend en om een flow op te zetten van je applicatie waardoor je in no-time een prototype kunt bouwen die eruit ziet als een geschetste applicatie. Maar met clickable buttons en animaties. Erg krachtig, dus ook daar moeten we goed induiken. Helaas hoorde ik net (donderdag, de 2e dag) bij een andere sessie dat de sketch functionaliteit nog niet in deze preview zitten. Da’s wel een teleurstelling.

Daarnaast is er een enorme verbetering gemaakt voor de Photoshop/Illustrator workflow met Expression Blend. Het is mogelijk om direct in Blend Photoshop files te importeren waarbij vectoren die gemaakt zijn in Photoshop bewaard blijven zodat deze nog te wijzigen zijn in Blend. Alle lagen, inclusief effecten (masks, etc) worden 1 op 1 overgenomen. Zelf fonts en alle fontsettings zoals line-height, etc. worden overgenomen in Blend.

 

Silverlight 3 beta 1

Weinig verrassingen voor wat mij betreft, op 1 na. Met Silverlight 3 wordt het mogelijk om de applicaties uit de browser te halen en offline te gebruiken. Dat geeft hele mooie mogelijkheden vooral omdat er geen los framework voor nodig is, zoals wel bij bijvoorbeeld Adobe Air het geval is. Ook de offline applicatie zit in de nieuwe plug-in.

Verder zijn toegevoegd:

• 3D support (basis, alleen plaatsen in 3D space)
• Pixel plaatsen
• Genereren van Bitmaps van je objecten
• Bitmap Shaders (dropshadow en blur worden meegeleverd, verder moeten we ze zelf schrijven)
• Support voor chroma key (dus geen alpha channel, maar een aardig alternatief)

Commerce Server 2009

Helaas hebben ze hier niets van laten zien, maar daar kan ik me iets bij voorstellen. Commerce Server, tenminste de voorgaande versie was niet voorzien van een front-end voor zover ik begreep, dus dat is wellicht bij deze versie hetzelfde.

 

Even een kort videootje genomen van net buiten de Venetian.

Creating a ColorFillToy in Silverlight – part 3

Click here to go to part 1 of the series
Click here to go to part 2 of the series

Click here to download the source
Click here to view a demo

 

Allright, now we’re finally going to finish the colorfilltoy by adding the ColorPicker found in the SilverlightContrib library.

To embed the ColorPicker in our application, the easy way would be to just throw it on our LayoutRoot. This would result in a large control which would cover a part of our drawing so this is not desirable. Terence used a ColorPickerButton thingy in his example so since there is no such control available in Silverlight 2 I guess we have to create one ourselves. We already created the button in XAML in part 1 of this series, so now we’ll make it work.

We also already created the button as a Control in the first part of the series, so let’s start by coding the Button control.

What we basically want to achieve is that, by pressing the ColorPickerButton the ColorPicker Control will collapse below the button. The ColorPicker control however, is a much bigger control than the button. So if the button is positioned along the right or left border of the hosting application, the ColorPicker will appear off screen.
I want the control to align on the right or the left side of the button depending on the position of the button and the space available.
To accomplish that we have to check the LayoutRoot element of the application and use that to do our measurements. Since we already have that object in our application, we will add the ColorPicker to that as well.

Get the LayoutRoot element of the Application

Once we have the LayoutRoot we’ll save it in a private field. We also need an instance of the ColorPicker control from the SilverlightContrib library.

In the loaded eventhandler we are going to check if the LayoutRoot of the application is actually a Grid or a Canvas. If it’s not, we cannot calculate where the ColorPicker control needs to be positioned. We’ll throw an exception if it’s not.

All this put together creates something like this:

private Panel __parentPanel;
private SilverlightContrib.Controls.ColorPicker _colorPicker = new SilverlightContrib.Controls.ColorPicker();

/// 

/// ColorPickerButton control to leverage the ColorPicker control
/// 
public ColorPickerButton()
{
	// Required to initialize variables
	InitializeComponent();

    this.Loaded += ColorPickerButton_Loaded;
}

private void ColorPickerButton_Loaded(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
    _parentPanel = this.Parent as Panel;
    if(_parentPanel == null)
    {
        throw new Exception("Parent control should be a control derived from FrameworkElement. Examples: Grid, Canvas");
    }
    LayoutRoot.Children.Add(_colorPicker);
}

The SelectedColor Property

Since we’re using the ColorPickerButton control to show and hide the ColorPicker control we need some way to persist the value of the selectedcolor that is set in the ColorPicker control.

We’ll create a similar DependencyProperty for the ColorPickerButton like there is for the ColorPicker Control itself:

/// 

/// Event fired when a color is selected.
/// 
public event SilverlightContrib.Controls.ColorPicker.ColorSelectedHandler ColorSelected;
#region SelectedColor DependencyProperty
/// 

/// Gets or sets the currently selected color in the Color Picker.
/// 
public Color SelectedColor
{
    get { return (Color)GetValue(SelectedColorProperty); }
    set
    {
        SetValue(SelectedColorProperty, value);
    }
}

/// 

/// SelectedColor Dependency Property.
/// 
public static readonly DependencyProperty SelectedColorProperty =
    DependencyProperty.Register(
        "SelectedColor",
        typeof(Color),
        typeof(ColorPickerButton),
        new PropertyMetadata(new PropertyChangedCallback(SelectedColorChanged)));

private static void SelectedColorChanged(DependencyObject d, DependencyPropertyChangedEventArgs e)
{
    ColorPickerButton p = d as ColorPickerButton;
    if (p != null && p.ColorSelected != null)
    {
        p.ColorSelected((Color)e.NewValue);
    }
}
#endregion

Handling clicks

To finish up the control we need to handle the clicks on the ColorPickerButton. We want to prevent the ColorPicker control to disappear every time it is clicked. This time we’ll do it by handling the click on the LayoutRoot object and check if our control is hit by using the VisualTreeHelper and LINQ to query the results:

private void LayoutRoot_MouseLeftButtonUp(object sender, MouseButtonEventArgs e)
{
    IEnumerable uiElements = VisualTreeHelper.FindElementsInHostCoordinates(e.GetPosition(null), LayoutRoot);
    var elements = from elem in uiElements
                   where elem == this.ColorPickerButtonCanvas
                   select elem;

    if (elements.Count() == 0)
        return;

    _colorPicker.Visibility = _colorPicker.Visibility ==
        Visibility.Collapsed ? Visibility.Visible : Visibility.Collapsed;
}

Positioning the ColorPicker control

To position the control we’ll use the LayoutUpdated event of the ColorPickerButton. Note: I created the method only for left/right positioning calculations, not for the bottom/top one, I also only tested it in a Canvas control but it should work in a Grid as well:

private void ColorPickerButton_LayoutUpdated(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    double leftPos = 0;
    double topPos = 0;
    double leftPosInParent = 0;

    _colorPicker.MinWidth = 200;
    _colorPicker.MinHeight = 200;
    if (_parentPanel != null)
    {
        if (_parentPanel.GetType() == typeof(Canvas))
        {
            leftPosInParent = Canvas.GetLeft(this);
        }
        if (_parentPanel.GetType() == typeof(Grid))
        {
            leftPosInParent = this.Margin.Left;
        }
    }

    topPos = ColorPickerButtonCanvas.ActualHeight;

    double maxWidth = double.Parse(App.Current.RootVisual.GetValue(FrameworkElement.WidthProperty).ToString());
    if (leftPosInParent + _colorPicker.Width > maxWidth)
    {
        //align right
        leftPos = -_colorPicker.Width + this.ActualWidth;
    }
    else
    {
        //small offset for the slider
        topPos += 5;
    }

    Canvas.SetLeft(_colorPicker, leftPos);
    Canvas.SetTop(_colorPicker, topPos);
}

With this code it makes it possible to position the button on the right or left side of any control and it will automatically switch to right or left alignment:

Final adjustments

Now to use the color that was selected in the ColorPicker we need to remove the random color stuff we have now and replace it with a single line of code:

Color color = myColorPickerButton.SelectedColor;

Hope this helps!

Click here to download the source

Click here to view a demo

Creating a ColorFillToy in Silverlight - Part 2

Click here to view a demo of the application after part 2 of the tutorial/
Click here to download the source

In part 1 of this tutorial we focused on the creation of the XAML for the ColorFillToy application. In this part, we will create the code to set the cursor and to detect the FillArea that we need to fill.

Terence Tsang from shinedraw.com did the preparation for us, so we're going to reuse some of his code from his flash-vs-silverlight post on the ColorFillToy.

I'm also going to use the ColorPicker from the SilverlightContrib project. So we'll need a reference in our project for that.
As a little extra I'm going to create a ColorPickerButton control which triggers the ColorPicker and shows the selected color. Page Brooks was pretty excited about this and we're probably going to include it in the SilverlightContrib project as an addition to the ColorPicker control. I'll get around to this in the next and final part of this serie.

Finalizing the XAML

First of all we're going to finish up our XAML in Expression Blend by creating a ColorPickerButtonControl and creating an image which we'll use as our cursor. There is no bucket cursor available in Silverlight so we'll have to create one ourselves.

Using Expression Blend we can create a button looking a lot like the one Terence used in his Flash example.

First create the button on the LayoutRoot of the ColorFillToy. It's just a bunch of rectangles and paths making it look like this:


The most important thing of this control is the Rectangle (second object in our Canvas) named ButtonBackground. ButtonBackground is used to "fill" the button with the currently selected color of the ColorPicker.

Once we're pleased with the looks of the ColorPickerButtonControl we can right-click the container Canvas and select "Make Control...".
Now Blend will do most of the work for us. Create the control, create the reference and and instance of the control where we had our container Canvas.

The new Control will open in a new window in Blend. Close it and return to the Page.xaml.

Now lets not forget to add an image to the LayoutRoot canvas of 16x16 and select the paintbucket image. I placed the image right outside of the canvas so it won't be visible if the application loads.



This rounds up the design part.
Right-click the Page.xaml in Expression Blend and select "Edit in Visual Studio" to continue in VS2008.
Like I said earlier, we're going to use most of the code Terence created for us. You can download his code here: http://www.shinedraw.com/?dl_id=113

Making it work

Most of the important stuff is done in the RootVisual_MouseLeftButtonDown handler:

void RootVisual_MouseLeftButtonDown(object sender, MouseButtonEventArgs e)
{
    // generate random color
    Random r = new Random();
    byte red = (byte)(255 * r.NextDouble());
    byte green = (byte)(255 * r.NextDouble());
    byte blue = (byte)(255 * r.NextDouble());
    Color color = Color.FromArgb(255, red, green, blue); 

    // get the ui
    Border border = sender as Border;
    Canvas canvas = (Canvas)border.Child;

    // create ellipse
    Ellipse ellipse = new Ellipse() { Fill = new SolidColorBrush(color), Width = DEFAULT_SIZE, Height = DEFAULT_SIZE };
    ellipse.SetValue(Canvas.LeftProperty, e.GetPosition(canvas).X);
    ellipse.SetValue(Canvas.TopProperty, e.GetPosition(canvas).Y);

    // add to stage
    canvas.Children.Add(ellipse);
    ScaleTransform scale = new ScaleTransform() { CenterX = DEFAULT_SIZE / 2, CenterY = DEFAULT_SIZE / 2 };
    ellipse.RenderTransform = scale;

    // expand the ellipse
    DoubleAnimation doubleAnimatoin1 = new DoubleAnimation() { From = 1, To = SCALE_MAX };
    doubleAnimatoin1.Duration = new Duration(new TimeSpan(0, 0, 3));
    Storyboard.SetTarget(doubleAnimatoin1, scale);
    Storyboard.SetTargetProperty(doubleAnimatoin1, new PropertyPath("(ScaleX)"));

    DoubleAnimation doubleAnimatoin2 = new DoubleAnimation() { From = 1, To = SCALE_MAX };
    doubleAnimatoin2.Duration = new Duration(new TimeSpan(0, 0, 3));
    Storyboard.SetTarget(doubleAnimatoin2, scale);
    Storyboard.SetTargetProperty(doubleAnimatoin2, new PropertyPath("(ScaleY)"));

    // start the story board
    Storyboard storyboard = new Storyboard();
    storyboard.Children.Add(doubleAnimatoin1);
    storyboard.Children.Add(doubleAnimatoin2);
    storyboard.Begin();  
}

All that is actually done in this code is the following:
- Generate a random color
- Get the border object that is clicked on
- Create an Ellipse and add it to the Canvas located inside the Border
- Use a Storyboard to expand the Ellipse

So most of this stuff is reusable. We're going to make the following changes to this code to make it work in our application:
- Instead of Border objects we're going to use a method to find the fillarea that was clicked on.
- The cursor paintbucket needs to be added when hovering over ColorFillToy.
- We need to finish up our ColorPickerButtonControl to expand the ColorPickerControl when it's clicked and set the background of the button to the selected color. This selectedcolor is used to fill the Ellipse instead of the randomized color

Finding the FillArea

To locate the parent FillArea, we have are going to use the MouseLeftButtonDown event of the FillArea Canvas or of the objects on the FillArea Canvas.
We can use a recursive method to go through the collection of user controls from top to bottom. The first FillArea we encounter will be the parent FillArea of the clicked object.
I created an extension method for the FrameWorkElement controls:

public static Panel FindFillArea(this FrameworkElement originalSource)
{
 if (originalSource == null) throw new ArgumentNullException("originalSource");
 if (originalSource.Name.IndexOf("fillarea") == 0 || originalSource == Application.Current.RootVisual)
  return (Panel)originalSource;

 FrameworkElement parent = (FrameworkElement)originalSource.Parent;
 if (parent != null)
 {
  if (parent.Name.IndexOf("fillarea") == 0 || parent == Application.Current.RootVisual)
  {
   return (Panel)parent;
  }
  return FindFillArea(parent);
 }

 return (Panel)Application.Current.RootVisual;
}

We can use this extensionmethod in the MouseLeftButtonDownHandler.
Instead of the line:

Canvas canvas = (Canvas)border.Child;

We can use:

Panel panel = originalSource.FindFillArea();

Adding the paintbucket cursor

The add the paintbucket cursor add the following lines to the Loaded event of the control:

LayoutRoot.MouseMove += ColorFillToy_MouseMove;
cursor.IsHitTestVisible = false;
cursor.Visibility = Visibility.Collapsed;

And add the following MouseMove handler:

private void ColorFillToy_MouseMove(object sender, MouseEventArgs e)
{
 cursor.Visibility = Visibility.Visible;
 this.Cursor = Cursors.None;
 Canvas.SetLeft(cursor, e.GetPosition(null).X - 10);
 Canvas.SetTop(cursor, e.GetPosition(null).Y - 10);
}

By doing this the image will replace the normal cursor and it will appear to be a real cursor.

In this part we finished up the XAML, created an extension method to find the fillarea we need and filled the area with a random color.
In the next and final part we'll add the ColorPickerButton and the ColorPicker of the SilverlightContrib project and make sure we can pick any color we like.

Click here to view a demo of the application after part 2 of the tutorial/

Click here to download the source

Cheers!

Rob.

Creating a ColorFillToy in Silverlight - Part 1

Hi,

It's been a while since my last blogpost. It's been a bit of a hectic period lately.

But not blogging doesn't mean not doing anything :) I've been working on some stuff which I'll blog about in the coming period. Like a deepzoom application for my aunt which enables her to show the bronze sculpture work she does in detail.

But for now, I want to tell you something about the ColorFillToy I (re)created. Thanks Terence for the challenge :) (http://www.shinedraw.com/animation-effect/flash-vs-silverlight-colour-fill-toy/).

Terence of Shinedraw.com created a colorfilltoy in Flash and mentioned he didn't have enough knowledge on Expression Design to create a similar application in Silverlight.
I can say the same, I haven't worked with Design much, but I tried to recreate the application using Blend.

To achieve the shape I wanted, I created three circles. One large one and 2 smaller ones which I placed inside the larger one:


Now we need to remove the left half of the top circle and the right half of the bottom one. This is only possible if we convert the ellipse to a path object. You can achieve this by right clicking the object, choose the Path section and the Convert to Path option or by selecting the circles and choose the same option from the Object menu:


Now, by using the Direct selection tool (Shortcut key A in Blend) you can select parts of the ellipse which is now a path:


As said before, now delete the left part of the top circle and the right part of the bottom circle (or vice versa).
The shape you're getting now is exactly what you want.

Now, to create the fill ability I used wanted to use a clipping path so I need both of the shapes separately (the 2 halves of the yin-yang sign).

Next I converted the large circle to a path as well and copied it, and all of the other path's I created so far. We need to create 2 separate shapes, so the large circles need to be split up in 2 half circles. One left and one right side. You know the drill!

Visually there are no differences by making these changes, but you'll see next how these are really necessary to create the effect we need.
To glue the 3 shapes together (1 large half circle, and 2 smaller ones) we can use a compound path. Select the three paths, right-click and select Path, Make Compound Path:


Do the same with the other 3 shapes and we have our 2 halves of the yin-yang sign.
To make the filling effect possible we need to do 2 things:
1. Create a Canvas for the fill to be dropped on, make sure the Canvas has a fill, with the Alpha value of the fill set to 0% (not the opacity, but the alpha of the fill!)
2. Create a clipping path on the canvas to clip the ellipse if it gets any larger then the shape we had in mind.

To add the shape to a Canvas can easily be accomplished by right clicking the shape and selecting Group into, Canvas. Now a Canvas is created while the shape keeps its position and shape.
Creating a clipping path for this complex shape was a bit more difficult to achieve. At least the first time I tried :).

First, create a copy of the shape (the combined path). Now set the StrokeThickess to 0 in the Appearance section of the shape's Properties.
Next, by using the Direct selection tool make sure the shape surrounds the original shape:


Finally the path is ready to be used as a clipping path. Right-click the path and select Path, Make Clipping Path. In the pop-up that appears select the correct Canvas (Yin or Yang):


Note: When you notice a thin white line in the border you can adjust the path using the Direct selection tool. I cannot seem to get it aligned 100% accurately, even at 6400% zoom:


After creating these complex shapes, it's a piece of cake to create the small circles and the rectangle fill areas.
The end result should look something like this:


When creating these fillareas make sure they are prefixed with "fillarea". We are going to use this later on.

In the next part of this tutorial we'll do the coding. We can reuse a lot of the code Terence already created for us in his simple Silverlight version.


Hope this helps!