Expression design has a feature called Skeleton strokes which allows you to use arbitrary vector/bitmap as a stroke.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc294949(v=expression.30).aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc294775(v=expression.30).aspx
The stroke is treated as a skeleton and the brush is painted following the stroke. Using an ImageBrush in silverlight doesn't seem to have the same effect. Rather it just renders the ImageBrush as if it would render the fill but with the fill portion cut out.
BTW, I'm using Silverlight 5
Silverlight doesn't support this feature. At least not out of the box.
Related
In Windows Phone UI Design Principle, MS recommended use solid color rectangle or coding-gradient for Control Background to avoid incompatible in multi-screen. But in many requirements, using image as Control Background is necessary. Then, 9-patch image technique is used. In Android and IOs, it was support in core, but in WP it is lacking. I try to use it in WP by 3 approaches:
Using 9-cells Grid: clip image into 9 patch and lay them into cells. It works ok, but i afraid app performance reduce when has many control.
Using Custom Brush: only custom Brush to draw 9-patch image as ImageBrush, but seem MS not allow for custom Brush.
Using FramworkElement: like Rectangle, Ellipse... i want to create a FrameworkElement can draw a 9-patch image. But, can't use low-level render.
How can i implement 2nd and 3th approach?
I created a lib for Windows Phone which do exactly as Android NinePatchDrawable. You just need to set a bitmap image.9.png, the width and heigh... And done!!! you have you new image scale to the size you want. Enjoy it :). In the future I will add more option :).
GitHub link
You can compensate for the lack of low-level rendering and custom brush by using a WriteableBitmap: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.windows.media.imaging.writeablebitmap(v=vs.95).aspx
This way, you have complete control on how to render your background, then you can assign it to a single Image control. But it's way more complicated than the "use a grid with 9 image controls" method, and the performance improvement is probably insignificant.
I think I must be missing something obvious, but I'm unable to find this after several hours of searching. Is there no way to use a PictureBox or other control to contain an image with partial transparent/alpha-blended pixels, and place that over another image and have the blending be based on the image under it?
For example, this produces the results I want:
Place a panel on a form.
Add an OnPaint handler.
In the OnPaint handler draw 1 PNG, then draw another PNG over it, using Graphics.DrawImage for both.
This does not:
Place a PictureBox on a form and set it to a PNG.
Place another PictureBox on the form and set it to a PNG.
Place the 2nd picture box over the first.
...even if the 2nd picture box is just empty and has a background color of Transparent, it still covers the picture below it.
I've read this stems from all winform controls being windows, so by nature they aren't transparent.
...but even the 15 year old platform I'm migrating from, Borland's VCL, had several windowless controls, so it's hard to imaging winforms doesn't at least have some easy solution?
My first example above is one answer, true, but that adds a lot of work when you can only use one big panel and draw all of your "controls" inside of it. Much nicer if you can have separate controls with separate mouse events/etc. Even if not an image control, and a control I have to draw myself, that would be fine, as long as I can just put one image in each control. In VCL they called this a "paint box", just a rectangle area you could place on a form and draw whatever you want on it. Has it's own mouse events, Bounds, etc. If you don't draw anything in it, it is like it's not even there (100% transparent) other than the fact it still gets mouse events, so can be used as a "hot spot" or "target" as well.
The PictureBox control supports transparency well, just set its BackColor property to Transparent. Which will make the pixels of its Parent visible as the background.
The rub is that the designer won't let you make the 2nd picture box a child of the 1st one. All you need is a wee bit of code in the constructor to re-parent it. And give it a new Location since that is relative from the parent. Like this:
public Form1() {
InitializeComponent();
pictureBox1.Controls.Add(pictureBox2);
pictureBox2.Location = new Point(0, 0);
pictureBox2.BackColor = Color.Transparent;
}
Don't hesitate to use OnPaint() btw.
Sorry, I just found this... once I decided to Google for "winforms transparent panel" instead of the searches I was doing before, the TransPictureBox example show seems to do exactly what I need:
Transparency Problem by Overlapped PictureBox's at C#
Looks like there are 2 parts to it:
Set WS_EX_TRANSPARENT for the window style
Override the "draw background" method (or optionally could probably make the control style Opaque).
The System.Drawing.Graphics class has a property CompositionMode with two options: SourceOver (which, based on the alpha component, blends whatever is drawn with the background already existing) or SourceCopy which simply overwrites the background with whatever is being drawn.
Does something similar exist in WPF?
In WPF when i draw a PolyLine for example on top of another the new PolyLine always alphablends with the background. I think that is independent of the container being used. I am using a Canvas but could not find a blend mode property anywhere. What I want to do is what the SourceCopy compositionmode mentioned above does. I.e. the new PolyLine should simply overwrite whatever is already on the Canvas.
Is there a simple way to do that, short of using pixel shaders (which - as far as I understand - wouldn't work anyways because I don't have access to the Canvas backbuffer).
I am not stuck with a Canvas and would be happy to use any container that supports overwrite mode.
I currently have a solution based on a WriteableBitmap for which I obtain a System.Drawing.Graphics context and then manipulate the CompositionMode. It works but since my window is fullscreen that solution has serious performance impacts.
Clarification and example:
The WPF window is fully transparent and so is the Canvas (back ground color(0,0,0,0)). Now I draw a PolyLine with a Color.FromArgb(128,128,0,0). I now have a semi-transparent red polyline. Next I draw the same PolyLine with Color.FromArgb(0,0,0,0). The result is the same as before because of the alpha blending taking place. What I want, however, is that the red polyline is erased with the second polyline (which is exactly what the SourceCopy mode in the Graphics class does.
I think all you need to do is make sure that the brushes used to fill/stroke the PolyLine have fully opaque alpha values (i.e. 255). Then the background shouldn't be blended into it.
You could apply a Clipping Mask, this way you can provide the path to clip over the elements that are below it, but it might be tough to maintain after a lot elements are required to be clipped...
TextBox seems to work differently from others...
Say you want a different font, rounded corners, different colors, a tiled image for the background, reduced padding above/below the text (when I change the font on an individual TextBox they get a little too tall but there's a lot of wasted space), etc. How do you do this in Blend 4?
I'd like it to be in App.xaml so that it's used by default for all TextBox controls in the app.
I think everything you mentioned can be done using controltemplates.What is not working ?
Check this link
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms752068%28v=vs.85%29.aspx
It will get you started for sure
My aim is to get fine control "animation" when it is mouse-over-ed. For example, I have a "map" of controls (game map that represent different type of terrain), each of them is an image with trees/rocks/hills on the green grass or water (lake or see) image of blue/cyan color. When user point any image with mouse it should get shiny: either get more bright background or get a shiny border.
It is hard to say what exactly I want to have (either background change or border), I would like to try each of them and see what is the most appropriate for me.
I am going to have a custom control (MapTile) that will represent a map tile. I know how to catch MouseEnter/MouseLeave events, but not sure how to change control style and if it is a good idea to work with control style in CodeBehind, probably there are better XAML-based solutions.
Could you please help with a solution that provide few goals:
Goal1: Add highlighted border around the control (it will be squares/rectangles, or circles; use what is easier) on mouse enter, remove border on move leave;
Goal2: Change some properties of my CustomControl (for example, background color).
Thank you very much!
1. How to han
You might find it easiest to get hold of Expression Blend and use it to create a custom template for your control.
The Learn Expression Blend page would be a good place to start. Look for tutorials on customising buttons and this is the same sort of thing that you want to do.
You need to use an attached behavior on your control. You don't need to learn Blend for this.
Check this one as an example, but you can search the site for Mouse Over for other examples.
http://gallery.expression.microsoft.com/en-us/MouseOver3D