Martin Grayson: Adventures of a 'Devigner' : Design

Blacklight v2.0 (Dec08) is here!

Martin Grayson — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 19:51:00 GMT

It has been a really busy November for me, however, the December release of Blacklight has arrived. This release contains tonnes of bug fixes, as well as some really cool new features.

Check out the the new showcase here.

Get the latest release code from here.

Some of the new fully customisable controls and features include...

GLASS BORDER

The glass border give a glossy effect either over the top of content or behind.

PERSPECTIVE SHADOW BORDER

The perspective shadow draws a shadow behind the border giving a feeling of perspective, as if the border is standing upright...

RADIAL SHADOW BORDER

The radial shadow border give the effect that the border and its contents are hovering off of the ground. The shadow width and vertical offset are all customisable enabling you to create a greater sense of depth.

ANIMATED LAYOUT PANEL

Mike Parker has provided his first control to the project - the AnimatedLayoutPanel. This panel allows incredible deep levels of configuration to achieve the exact effect you are looking for. This must be seen... (Thanks Mike!)

LOADING ANIMATION

The cute little control gives you something to display when buffering a video, downloading an image / deep zoom content, waiting on a web service etc. You can also set the content to be what ever you please!

Go check it out at www.codeplex.com/blacklight.

Thanks,

Martin

Creating a Glass Button: The Complete Tutorial

Martin Grayson — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 18:33:00 GMT

Well, it was a while back that I posted the first Creating a Glass button tutorial. Of course, that was based on the old look of Sparkle, and I have had some feedback recently that the project doesn't run anymore. Also, the completed tutorial never 'made it to press' leaving people with a rather lifeless button.

Well folks - GREAT NEWS - I have finished working on a all new glass button. And what better design to follow than some of the glass buttons in our shiny new OS.

The Windows Vista taskbar has some real nice buttons - they are see through and have an internal glow. So, I though I would base my all new complete glass button tutorial on these babies. I also hope there is enough content in the tutorial to help you explore other designs and other controls.

So, attached to this post are the full instructions for creating the buttons above. I have also attached the finished project if you want to explore what I have done.

This has been a while coming, so please enjoy!

RSS Postit Application

Martin Grayson — Tue, 23 May 2006 15:32:00 GMT

Well, this is my second day of being a blogger, and I am well chuffed with the traffic coming onto the blog. So chuffed in fact, I have uploaded a little sample I made a while back for you all to enjoy...

I made this when I first started playing around with DataTemplates in ItemsControls. I was so amazed at how flexible the DataTemplate was, this Postit sample doesn't even scratch the surface. I could have put the data items onto anything!

In this, you can also drag the postits around, and when you click on a link, it takes you off to the web page. Whoopee! But in all seriousness, this is simply to demo how simple it is to make a simple data template... very!

I have attached the source code so you can add your own feed / improve upon it. NOTE: This is not a proper example on how to data bind... that will be coming later :) But if you make any significant changes, it would be great to see them. So, let us all know.

Til tomorrow.

Martin

P.S This was built with Beta 2 of WinFX, as will all of my project be. Most should work on previous bits, but you may need to change a line here or there.

Creating a Glass Button - PART ONE

Martin Grayson — Mon, 22 May 2006 20:23:00 GMT

PLEASE SEE THE UPDATED TUTORIAL HERE

Alot of people ask, when it comes to WPF, how do I make my app look cool?

WPF allows to fully customise the look and behaviour of all the common controls - this means a button no longer needs to be represented by a grey rectangle, or a radio button no longer needs to be represented by a round bullet.

All controls in WPF are lookless.

The image below shows the final output of what we will produce...

So, I have attached the tutorial and source code to this post... go fourth and build. Drop any comments if you have any problems and i will get back you with answers.

Martin