Effective UI has put together a site called the User Interface Resource Center .  They were kind enough to interview me about WPF, Silverlight, Expression and more.  As they put it: In the 2008 whitepaper “The New Iteration,” Karsten Read More...

Yeah, it's been awhile since I've blogged anything, so I thought a nice way to get back in the game was to post a BeginAnimation method. Sometimes you just want to start a simple animation in code, and the Silverlight way of doing it through storyboards just seems like more code that you feel like typing, which is where the WPF-inspired BeginAnimation comes in. Turns out you can do a pretty good BeginAnimation API yourself, using C# extension methods -- just drop the following code into your project: public static class Helper { public static void BeginAnimation(this FrameworkElement e, string prop, Timeline t) { var sb = new Storyboard(); e.Resources.Add(sb); sb.Children.Add(t); Storyboard.SetTarget(sb, e); Storyboard.SetTargetProperty(sb, prop); sb.Begin(); } } Which can be used: var tb = (TextBox)sender; var an = new DoubleAnimation(); an.From = 100; an.To = 200; tb.BeginAnimation("Height", an); (Okay, it doesn't handle all the corner cases quite like WPF, in particular calling BeginAnimation Read More...

About a month ago, I saw two unrelated questions where an ItemsControl was not behaving correctly when clicking on an item: Events weren’t being raised, items weren’t getting selected; chaos ensued. In both cases, the developer was adding an items container to the data template. (As a refresher, ListBoxItem, ListViewItem, and TreeViewItem are examples of item containers.) They were doing something like the following: < Grid > < Grid.Resources > < src : ItemsForSale x : Key ="Data"/> </ Grid.Resources > < ListBox ItemsSource ="{ StaticResource Data }"> < ListBox.ItemTemplate > < DataTemplate > < ListBoxItem Padding ="3,8,3,8" MouseDoubleClick ="ListBoxItem_MouseDoubleClick" > < TextBlock Text ="{ Binding Path =Description}"/> </ ListBoxItem > </ DataTemplate > </ ListBox.ItemTemplate > </ ListBox > </ Grid > When the correct way to implement the ListBox is something like the following: < Grid > < Read More...

There are many advantages to using the .NET Framework add-in technology to factor application logic and UI, including security isolation, discovery, activation, communication, lifetime management, and versioning. WPF builds on the .NET Framework add-in technology to enable visual add-ins ie add-ins that provide UI for host applications to display. All that you need to do is define the contract to specify what types of things the host wants the add-in's UI to do. The end result for the user is that they see both host and add-in UI intermingled without knowing about the complex machinery underneath to make it work. And, to some degree, developers might approach the development of add-ins the same way. For example, when a WPF host application displays a UI provided by an add-in, developers might intuitively expect features like data binding, commanding etc to just work. Features like this, though, need a little extra work to, err, get working because features like these weren't originally Read More...

If you are creating apps which have mdi's (multiple document interfaces) you should definitely take a look at Karls post on MDI task switching. Its an elegant solution and the post explains it nicely ... and yeah you do have the code ...:) .. Take a look Share this post Read More...

Here is a guide for using Flotzam at a conference: Flotzam at a conference is fun. It gives the audience the ability to immediately participate in the event as well as on the blogosphere. Their photos, twitters, etc, show up on the big screen. If you Read More...

I watched the stats for my wallpaper page tick past one million a few days ago. Wow! If you'd have told me when I posted my first macro photo years ago that it'd be the most popular page on my blog (by a long shot), I wouldn't have believed it. I haven't actually added up the individual downloads, but it would easily exceed one million, since I get a lot of direct links from other sites. I average a little over 4GB downloaded each day. Interestingly, more people download the widescreen versions of my wallpaper than the standard ones. I wouldn't have expected that. I receive a request almost every other day from someone who wants to use one or more of my photos for a project. I almost always say "yes," because I really enjoy seeing how the photos are featured. All I ask for is credit for the photo, a link back to my wallpaper page, and a sample or photo of the finished project. Over the years, my photos have been used: as wallpaper for Windows Vista, as a backdrop for a concert, Read More...