This May brings the first Dx3 Conference to Boston, “a four-day conference and expo filled with intensive workshops and sessions, created for interactive designers and developers who are moving beyond the web browser to deploy rich experiences to the desktop, game consoles, and mobile devices.” Lynda.com events, producer of the FlashForward Conference and Film Festival, is producing Dx3, and I’m excited to be presenting a session entitled Lay of the Land – WPF Tools, Utilities, and Resources.

Dx3 stands for “Design/Develop/Deploy.” Because this conference is not technology or platform specific (i.e. only Flash, or only WPF), the sessions and material presented cover a range of topics you don’t typically find at a design conference. I would definitely put this on your must attend list if at all possible.

Dx3 Conference Info
May 15 - 18, Marriot Copley Place, Boston

• Speakers
• Sessions
• Registration

I’ve been working on a custom Gradient Panel for Fireworks off and on for a while and wanted to go ahead and get it posted. It’s not in a final state, but it’s definitely usable as is. Having worked with XAML for quite a while now, I’ve grown to expect the ability to hand-tweak the offset values of GradientStops. Now I can do the same thing in Fireworks, all from the comfort of a panel!

I’m providing two ways to edit with precision: a zooming gradient stop interface and a grid of values. The attached photos show the Gradient Panel in action.

Download Fireworks Gradient Panel Extension

I was considering some of the common things that people want to do when they first start working with WPF. Creating reflections is one of those things, and while it’s not terribly difficult to do, it does become a monotonous task. And what do you do when you find yourself doing the exact same thing over and over? You create a custom control of course!

The Reflector control exists to perform one task: simulate a reflection of an object. You just bind the ReflectionTarget property (found in the Appearances category in Blend) to another control and it does all the work for you. If you want to tweak the reflection, you can always edit the ControlTemplate in Blend, but the default settings should cover most cases. I’m also looking at the height and width of the target control, so if you set the height and width of the Reflector control to Auto, it will size itself automatically (in most cases).

Lee Brimelow just posted a tutorial called Reflections in Visual Studio and Blend
at ContentPresenter.com that shows how to manually create reflections. After watching that tutorial you’ll see what I’m taking care of automatically.

download WPF Reflection Control

(Note: Add a reference to this assembly in Blend by selecting the Project tab, right-clicking the References folder and selecting Add Reference. Browse to the assembly included in the zip file. Once you’ve added the reference, click the More Controls link on the tool menu (last item — double down arrows), and select the User Controls tab. You’ll see the Reflector control listed there.)

Lee either gets no sleep, or has a lot more time for experimenting than I do. Check out this example where Flash and WPF/E live side by side and behave as one.