Delay's Blog

It's been a while since the March 09 release of the Silverlight Toolkit - and even longer since I last posted a collection of Charting links. It's clearly time for an update, so I've added a bunch of new links to the collection below (FYI: previously published links are gray):

Overviews (100 level)

• Silverlight Toolkit Released – More controls! - Tim Heuer's during the PDC keynote overview set the stage for good Charting content.
• Silverlight Toolkit (Silverlight 2 Control Pack) - Charting - Pete Brown followed up minutes later with another good overview. (Party trivia: The styles seen in his blog offer a rare glimpse of the pre-release Charting styles.)
• Silverlight 2 - Introducing the Chart Control - Chad Campbell was also ready with a good "zero-day" overview and code samples.
• The Weekly Source Code 36 - PDC, BabySmash and Silverlight Charting - Scott Hanselman's post includes a BabySmash tie-in and a smidge of flattery. :)
• Graphing – Silverlight Toolkit - Jesse Liberty introduces Charting and covers some of the basics.
• Bubble chart - Jesse Liberty introduces the BubbleSeries class and describes some interesting use-cases.
• The Bubble Chart in the Silverlight Toolkit - Sparkling Client interviews Jesse Liberty in this podcast discussing the BubbleSeries.

Scenarios (200 level)

• Zooming into a chart - Ruurd Boeke did the "zooming" scenario sample for the live Charting samples page - here's how he did it.
• Silverlight 2 - Getting Started with the Chart Control - Chad Campbell again - a thorough walkthrough of creating your first chart.
• Silverlight 2 Custom Stock Charts With Silverlight Toolkit - Peter Bromberg with his own walkthrough - creating a stock chart with plenty of code.
• Styling the Charts in the Silverlight Toolkit - Pete Brown again - this time with a good styling overview for designers.
• Designer’s Guide to Styling Silverlight Toolkit Charting Controls - Mehdi Slaoui Andaloussi goes over the top with a "soup to nuts" designer-oriented guide to styling everything. It probably helps that Mehdi works on my team and authored the shipping styles for Charting as well. :)
• Pie Chart Styling in the Silverlight Toolkit - Cross-Slice Gradients - Pete Brown takes a proof-of-concept for holistic pie chart styling and uses it to great effect.
• Bubbles – 1 Chart – three Axes - Jesse Liberty takes advantage of BubbleSeries to visualize historical data in an interesting way.
• Customizing the Labels on an Axis of the Silverlight Toolkit Chart - Kevin Dockx calls out the AxisLabelStyle property which allows designers to easily customize the labels of an axis.
• Dazzling Silverlight Toolkit Pie Charts with Overlays - Pete Brown continues working with pie charts and creates a further level of polish by adding some shiny overlays that make the visuals "pop".
• Silverlight Charting: Creating rich data point tooltips - Jeff Wilcox shows how he customized the ToolTips of a LineSeries to show a wealth of information relevant information in a very user-friendly manner.
• Pie Chart and Column Chart videos post - Jesse Liberty demonstrates the use of PieSeries and ColumnSeries in a set of "How Do I" videos.
• Styling Charts with the Silverlight Toolkit - Pete Brown's comprehensive Expression Newsletter article provides some of the best information available anywhere about Charting styling!
• Styling a Silverlight Chart - Rudi Grobler shows how to re-style a LineSeries to look just like the Google Analytics charts.
• LineChart with Markers - Lee demonstrates one way of adding markers (also known as annotations or cursors) to a Chart.
• Showing and Hiding Series in chart - Lee neatly solves the problem of hiding (and showing) individual Series by clicking on their entries in the Legend.
• Creating, Binding and Styling a Bubble Chart - Timmy Kokke shows off how some of the new Blend 3 features can be used to completely customize the appearance of a BubbleSeries without writing any code at all.
• Custom Bar Charts with the Silverlight Toolkit - Pete Brown discusses how he went about dramatically customizing the appearance of two Chart types to create a very modern, polished look for a demo app.

Internals (300 level)

• Adding a Location Crosshair to Silverlight Charts - Colin Eberhardt shows how to add crosshairs on top of a Chart to display the coordinates of the mouse pointer.
• Adding a Location Crosshair to Silverlight charts (again!) - Colin Eberhardt updates his crosshairs post to accommodate changes in the March 09 release.
• How to create stock charts using the Silverlight Toolkit - Rudi Grobler shows how to create a custom Series type that's perfect for stock charts (open/high/low/close).
• Silverlight Charts: Binding multiple Series - Jeremiah Morrill shows off an attached behavior that enables binding a Chart to a "collection of collections" to create an arbitrary number of series automatically.
• Interacting with Charts - Lee implements a nice interactive range selection behavior to create a friendly "zoom" feature for controlling the Axis range.

Jafar Husain's posts (Partner level)

• Building an Observable Model in Silverlight - Some deep, technical detail about the observable model that Charting uses to enable its rich dynamic data support.
• Writing Your Own Silverlight Chart Series (Part 1): Making Designers Happy - An overview of what it takes to create a new Series type and some scaffolding for an OHLC Series.
• Writing Your Own Silverlight Chart Series (Part 2): Implementing the Series - All that it takes to completely implement a custom chart type using only the public interfaces!

My posts (Ego level)

• Announcing a free, open source Charting solution for Silverlight [Silverlight Toolkit released today at PDC!]
• Click your way to great Silverlight charts [Live ChartBuilder sample and source code!]
• Improving ChartBuilder's cultural sensitivity [ChartBuilder app/source updated!]
• Silverlight Charting gets a host of improvements [Silverlight Toolkit December 08 release now available!]
• Great Silverlight charts are still just a click away [ChartBuilder sample and source code updated for Charting's December 08 release]
• Yummier pies! [A technique for more flexible gradient styling of Silverlight Toolkit pie charts]
• Columns of a different color [Customizing the appearance of Silverlight charts with re-templating and MVVM]
• Silverlight Charting is faster and better than ever [Silverlight Toolkit March 09 release now available!]
• Silverlight Charting remains just a click away - and runs on WPF, too!! [ChartBuilder sample and source code updated for Charting's March 09 release]
• Supporting the unsupported [Two fixes for the unofficial WPF Charting assembly!]
• If they can build it, they will come... [Enabling anyone to compile WPF Charting from the Silverlight Charting sources!]
• Another round of (un)support [Quick fix for the unofficial WPF Charting assembly!]

Many, many thanks to everyone who has spent time helping others learn how to use Silverlight/WPF Charting!

PS - If I've missed any good resources, please leave a comment with a link - I'm always happy to find more quality Charting content! :)