Proof-of-concept Silverlight XPS reader comes to Beta 2 [SimpleSilverlightXpsViewer sample updated for Silverlight 2 Beta 2!]
Earlier this week I was asked about an update to my SimpleSilverlightXpsViewer sample for the newly released Silverlight 2 Beta 2. (Background reading: Introductory Post, Beta 1 Update.) I spent a bit of time on this just now and migrating SimpleSilverlightXpsViewer to Beta 2 was very straightforward.
I've updated the SimpleSilverlightXpsViewer demonstration page and also the source code download, so you can try things out in your browser and/or download the code to see how it works!
Notes:
- A project reference to System.Net needed to be added in order for WebClient to resolve properly. (This is covered in the "Breaking Changes" document.)
- DependencyObject.SetValue no longer seems to automatically convert the type of its value parameter, so there were three places I changed an int to a double for consistency with the underlying DependencyProperty type (ex: "0"->"0.0").
- The "disappearing page border" issue that showed up in Beta 1 still seems to be present in Beta 2, so I worked around it by changing the "pageGraphic" from a Rectangle[Fill/Stroke] to a Border[BorderBrush]+Grid[Background]. A web search turned up a couple of customer reports of this behavior for Shapes (Path, Rectangle, etc.), so it should be fixed for the final release of Silverlight.
- I discovered and fixed a bug with the math behind the zoom slider that could cause problems when the browser window was made very small. (This bug was unrelated to Beta 2.)
SimpleSilverlightXpsViewer is a fun project that really seems to resonate with people; folks have told me all kinds of neat ideas they had while playing around with it. In fact, if all goes well, there just might be a cool, practical, relevant use of SimpleSilverlightXpsViewer that I'll be able to share sometime soon... :)
