OrangeFlash

Previous parts:

• Blend For ActionScript Coders #1: MouseEvents.
• Blend For ActionScript Coders #2: List Controls.

I think we are quite ready for our first application in Blend, that is RSS Reader, we also “meet” closer with XAML today.

Idea

Ok, our current RSS reader should be really simple, since this is our first time with layout in Blend. I say, we need one TextBox (something like TextInput\TextArea in Flex), one Button, and ListBox which will hold data from RSS feed. We Also have to create some custom class which will present every feed item in appropriate form, but this is another story.
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Previous part.

This is second tutorial about Microsoft Blend, I strongly recommend you to read previous part of this tutorial, you may find some basic information about editing code, basis of C# syntax and some links.

In this tutorial we will learn how to use list based controls in .Net and also how to load an images in System.Windows.Controls.Image control. Lets create new project called “List” in Blend and open in your C# IDE.
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Sometimes you might want to create different item renderers in a single list-based control i.e. in application form, here is my way of creating it. Basicaly we’ll use single class ItemContainer, but I’ve also created bunch of utility classes which might help me in future. So here they are:

• ItemContainer: This is Canvas subclass. We will create actualItemRenderer in this container. And this container will play as ItemRenderer for List.
• ItemContainerData: This is replacement for data property, it has itemRenderer and data properties, used by ItemContainer.
• InitFactory: ClassFactory subclass, which has one more property - initObject, this is very similar to initObject from ActionScript 2.0 in methods like MovieClip.attachMovie.

The whole idea is to create special ItemRenderer that can “emulate” other controls, in my case it is subclass of Canvas which simply creates a specific UI control adds it to display list . Then we are to let the container know which renderer is to emulate, for this purpose I use ItemContainerData with special fields.

Sources and examples:

Example
Sources
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I was playing with Microsoft Blend (previously known as Interactive Designer) for a while, and now I think I’m ready to write short tutorial. Since I’m basicaly ActionScript coder this article will contain some migration tips and comparisons with Flex\ActionScript.

For this tutorial you will need:

• Microsoft Expression Blend Beta 1
• .Net 3.0 Framework
• Some C# IDE ( C# Express for example which I’m using in this tutorial)

In this tutorial we will learn how to work with mouse events in blend
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In List based controls from Flex Framework, we aren’t allowed to create itemRenderers with different size, due to the way Lists are scrolled (we scroll model instead of view). But sometimes we just have to do this, for example if we want to fill List with different images, or text with different formatting.

So I’ve decided to create List-Like component based on VBox, which has dataProvider and itemRenderer properties, and can render items with different sizes, which looks like this:

Download Examples
Example

In ActionScript 1-2, we often needed to create preloader for images, because we couldn’t show them while loading were in progress. ActionScript 3.0 changes this, with ByteArray and URLStream classes we can work with bytes instead of files.

That means that we can show half of the image, or different states of progressive JPEG file.
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I dont like the way we create and modify items with ContextMenu class in ActionScript 3.0, first we have to create item, then add event listener, then push our item to ContextMenu.customItems, I think this is quite alot of code for simple task. And there is one more disadvanage, we cannot subclass ContextMenu items, this means we cannot create subclass which would add some items by default.

All this inspired me to create my own class which would manage ContextMenu instance. Then I’ve added methods like remove, insert, getItem.
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Well, to be honest this is not competely truth, we cannot write in ActionSctipt for .NET 3.0, but we can write in JScript which is subtype of JavaScript 2.0, which is ECMA4… well this is just like ActionScript 3.0 ;). The only one seriouse difference is classes and their location, but we still have ByteArray, BitmapData\Bitmap and ColorMatrix (which is ColorMatrixFilter in AS) and bunch of other similar classes.

Now, .NET 3.0 is compatable with version 1 and 2, so that means that we can compile library for .NET 2 and use it in our WPF/E-.NET 3.0 project.

For this mini tutorial you’ll need .NET 3.0 and Microsoft Expression Interactive Designer.
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Long long time ago, I’ve created simple application - EffectsPlaygroung. EP could help you preview effects from mx.effects.* package. Everything was fine, but code was awfull, and UI design was hard to understand (Guess where is the button?).

So I’ve decided to rewrite it, current version can:

Create new Effects (Effect Settings menu)
Add Effects to Composition(Composition Settings or Via Effect header context menu)
Preview Effect(Play menu)
See Code(See Code menu)

I also plan to implement some drag and drop functionality.

Check this out.

Well this is pre-alpha version of my first .NET 3.0 application, dont kick me please. Currently this is really-simple-OrangeFlash-rss reader, that means, that it can read only this feed, but dont worry this is temporary.

Download application
Download sources

You will need NET 3.0 runtime and Expression Interactive Designer.