A couple of months ago I posted a preview video of the “Fireworks Brush Manager”. Since that post I’ve had pretty much no free time to work on the project. I’ve update the layout a bit, added new icons, etc., but haven’t really focused on finished up the functionality. Last week I spent a little time before bed one night reviewing how I expected to interact with the panel and realized that I was trying to cram too much into a single panel. I realized I really had two panels: a ResourceDictionary Panel and a new Brush Editor panel. Since I have the ResourceDictionary part of the thing in a partially working state, I decided to go ahead and post a preview release to start getting some feedback and bug testing going.

I only have the “Open” function working, which lets you browse for a ResourceDictionary. I’m planning on adding Save capability and a Sync feature, which will synchronize objects on the stage with brushes assigned to them should the resource change. Watch for that over the next 3 months

Known Issues: I’ve found that I have to open the same ResourceDictionary twice sometimes in order for the file to be recognized. So if your brushes don’t appear at first, try again. If your brushes never appear, or if you run into bugs, please send me a note along with your ResourceDictionary and I’ll add it to my list of test RDs.

(7: The number of times I typed “Panel” in this post, 8 after that last reference)

Download ResourceDictionaryPanel Preview
(Double-click MXP to install, swf included if you have problems, copy directly to the Command Panels folder: C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Fireworks CS3\Configuration\Command Panels)

I’ve posted a couple of videos that highlight new features included in NetAdvantage for WPF 2007.2 that we released about a month ago. The first video demonstrates how you can use the samples included in the xamFeatureBrowser to quickly create a xamRibbon.

The second video demonstrates a feature that I’m really excited about: ResourceWashing. Using ResourceWashing, you can “wash” the brushes defined in ResourceDictionaries with a new color. Since the brushes can be washed at runtime, you can create an application that can be infinitely customized by the end user — really exciting! This is the same washing technology used by AppStylist for Windows Forms in the “New from Template” feature. The xamRibbon is the first control whose brushes have been grouped into “WashGroups” to really take advantage of this technology. Moving forward, we’ll be applying the same techniques to the other controls. I can’t wait to see what the WPF community ends up creating with this technology!

Videos

• xamRibbon QuickStart Video
• ResourceWashing Video

A couple of years ago Robby introduced me to the term “McGuffin”, via this post. In his explanation, he admits that he is probably stretching the original intention of the word, and since I’m now interpreting his interpretation, it may be safe to say that my usage of the term is now far from its original meaning. You be the judge.

If you’re reading this blog, you’re probably also reading Josh Smith’s blog, and you’re probably aware that I’m working on a new skin for Podder, his WPF podcast reader. Throughout the design process, I’ve had lots of different ideas running through my head - I really have a clean slate to play with here, and any of you who have designed an app or web site from scratch know how challenging that initial blank page can be. There are so many possibilities, so many directions you can take the layout; ultimately, you just have to go with something then tweak until you go crazy. It’s definitely a different process than designing something that works (visually) with an existing product line. There, you have an established aesthetic that drives the design.

So, as I go into the polish stage and really have a feel for the direction the layout is going, I’m looking at ways to make the application feel responsive, alive. One way I’m doing this is through my “McGuffin”-Enabling Image Converter. This converter is bound to an Image’s Source property and then returns an “averaged” Color - I take a random sampling of pixels then average their color values. The resulting color represents the generalized color of the image. In Podder, I’m using this converter to set the background image of the application to a color that works well with the image of the selected podcast, so as the selection changes, the color of the application changes to match, and the plot advances (my McGuffin).

I’ve added this converter to the Infragistic ToyBox assembly that I started a while back (and haven’t actively added to in a while). Download the sample project to see the converter in action. (Note: it currently only works with local images, not images whose source points to a web address).

With the release of NetAdvantage for .NET 2008.1, we’ve also rolled out an update to the infragistics.com home page. Front and center on the home page you will see our updated product icons. These icons served as a starting point for artwork updates throughout the site and product, from updated box shots to control landing pages. We actually introduced site-wide artwork updates with the WPF 2007.2 release in January, I just didn’t get a chance to call out the changes. The icons were very much a team effort within the Visual Design Group, with everyone contributing in some way. I feel like we’ve done a good job of abstracting the target platforms into representative icons. We actually spent more time fine-tuning the final colors than we had to spend creating the illustrations. You hit the limit on the hue spectrum pretty quickly when you’re trying to create unique colors for a large number of products.

The updates on the sub-pages are subtle, a face-lift really. If you’re a frequent visitor to the site, you probably won’t be able to identify the changes, you’ll just feel the difference. The control pages, like the xamRibbon page, have all been updated with new background and menu treatments. We had received a few comments from site visitors saying they couldn’t find certain pages, even though they were available directly on the side nav. So, we updated the treatment of the menu items on the side nav, left aligning each item and adding separators. With the changes, the left nav should look more like a menu and not fade away into the periphery.

The updated icons and background treatments can also be seen throughout the product, from installation screens to about dialogs. I think it’s a nice, fresh start for the 2008 releases.

I’m in the process of building a Brush Manager panel for Fireworks and I’ve posted a video of its current (really rough) state. In addition to including the gradient editing features of my Fireworks Gradient Panel, the Brush Manager will support opening and saving XAML-based Resource Dictionaries, enabling a true round-trip brush editing experience between Fireworks and Blend. In this video, I open a sample ResourceDictionary xaml file and apply brushes contained within that file to the selected object on the stage.
Brush editing is not enabled yet, but you can see the new ColorSelector, modeled after the Blend color selector. I really like using the hue slider in Blend and soon we’ll all be able to use the same model in Fireworks!

The panel is still in an unpolished state, but I’m just getting the pieces working together at the moment. I’m hoping to get a fully functional version released in a few weeks, but free time is hard to come by, so we’ll see. Still, I wanted to get the word out on what I think is going to be a great panel for both the Fireworks and WPF design communities. Stay tuned!