Season's greetings guys :) Hope your Christmas was great. Ok so before we go into the next year I thought I'll take a look at XamlPadX since it will get a bit tough to spend some time on it in the next year. So XamlpadX v2 looks like: New features: 1> Line numbers in the Editing box 2> Written xaml can now be indented automatically(Ctrl I or right click and click on the menu item) 3> Closing tags are automatically generated (Note that it doesnt look forward while generating the closing tag. This is to keep it as simple as possible) So if you have something like <A </A> and then type in the '>' after the first A you will end up with <A></A></A>. 4> Theres an Open/Save File menu for opening/saving...

By now I hope that most of you have atleast tried Vista. If not, join the bandwagon . INSTALL VISTA!!! :) I love every bit of Vista and would like to share some handy tips and also bring into focus some apps that I use a lot. 1> Launch group favorites in IE : This feature is really nice. You can open all items in your Favorites group by clicking on the arrow 2> Shortcuts to quick launch items : We can use Windows key and number keys to launch the quick launch items. So win+1 would result in minimizing all apps 3> Snipping tool : This is a nice tool to get an image clip and to edit it. 4> Windows movie maker : I use this a lot to make movies of photos. You can add your own transitions and audio effects. This...

Vista look on Non-Aero themes...

Some time back Marcelo had written a series of posts covering drag and drop. This was interesting reading and I had uploaded the C# code in one of my previous posts. Recently, I came across Pavans blog where he shows the same using attached properties. The code is written with reusability and ease of use in mind. To use the code you would need to specify the source and the destination (putting it in layman terms) < local:CanvasDragDropAdvisor x:Key = " advisor " /> < Canvas Background = " White " local:DragDropManager.DragSourceAdvisor = " {StaticResource advisor} " local:DragDropManager.DropTargetAdvisor = " {StaticResource advisor} " > You would need to implement the SourceAdvisor and TargetAdvisor ( in the above...

One more interesting WPF app ... a 3D rss reader ... EnJoi " UniveRSS is a 3D RSS feed reader for Windows Vista. It leverages the Windows Presentation Foundation and provides a stunning way of visualizing RSS feeds and their content. It introduces a full-screen 3D universe where galaxies represent the folders of your RSS feed directory, and the stars are represented by the spinning cubes that hold the feed information. Size and position of the feed cubes indicate how many unread items they contain." Download the app from here clicking on the cube brings up the feed as below

WPF/E just came out with the CTP release.... download link: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=a3e29817-f841-46fc-a1d2-cedc1ed5c948&DisplayLang=en For the mac enthusiasts: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=1665A00C-F7BB-459A-9DA2-F1DB6297277F&displaylang=en The sample pack http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/info.aspx?na=22&p=20&SrcDisplayLang=en&SrcCategoryId=&SrcFamilyId=&u=%2fdownloads%2fdetails.aspx%3fFamilyID%3d8aeebe39-6699-4f4f-9732-ca732e57ae21%26DisplayLang%3den Since pictures speak better than words here are some snapshots of some WPF/E samples: if WPF/E doesnt ring a bell then read the following "WPF/E stands for Windows Presentation...

Some time back I posted a gadget with the rotating earth. This looked nice but it lacked some interaction. One of the things to make it interactive was to map the point of clicking to the texture applied on the globe. To get the 2D coordinate we need to perform a hittest on the Viewport3D and this will give us access to RayMeshGeometry3DHitTestResult object. This provides info on the mesh, geometrymodel, vertex indices of the triangle hit, and the barycentric coordinates . To obtain the coordinate we multiply the vertex weights (barycentric coordinates) with the cordinates of the triangle hit. We then scale this point with the texture size to get the actual pixel within the texture ( The link to the barycentric coordinates is a nice read and...