Here’s a Photoshop Action (i.e. a script) that I made to pre-dither an image so that it renders nicely on a display with 16-bit color (like Windows Phone 7). A quick warning before you download it: the first thing this script will do is flatten your image (e.g. merge all layers into one). So don’t [...]

A handy feature of WPF is the ability to tell TextBlock to truncate its text to ellipses if it runs out of room. You do this by setting the TextTrimming property on the TextBlock and voilah!, your text ends up looking “like this…” This is especially handy in databinding or localization scenarios where you don’t [...]

This is a long time coming. I finally created a version of Simple Styles that is designed for Silverlight. Woohoo! This was a rewrite, a complete departure from the WPF Simple Styles and it may still be a little rough around the edges so please send me feedback! What are Simple Styles? Simple Styles are [...]

Deep linking is a strange term and the first time I heard it was while I was giving a talk.  Someone asked me if Silverlight supported deep linking and I sort stumbled around until I found my way to a big “I don’t know.”  Well, now I do and the answer is, um, kind of.  [...]

Lately I’ve been making a point of being a little more organized about how I track reusable code.  When I’m working with a client and come across something that is worth keeping or sharing I’ll usually ask if I can do it on my own time so I can keep or share it.  So far [...]

I’ve been experimenting with particle generation a little bit over the weekend.  I guess that if I were a gamer, particle effects may seem kind of ordinary.  They’re first draft fodder for game guys.  For me, though, there is still a lot of allure and new here. The result: I’ve got myself a new effect [...]

It’s been a long time coming: Kaxaml finally supports the latest version of Silverlight. Woohoo! Sorry to those who have been been waiting. Not a lot of changes in this release other than the Silverlight changes. This is still very much a beta. There are a couple of Silverlight issues that I just haven’t been [...]

I’ve been meaning to write about this one for a while. AnimatingPanelBase is a substitute base class for Panel that makes it super easy to add motion to Panels in Silverlight. It works just like any other Panel. You define your layout logic in Measure and Arrange just like you normally would and you get [...]

This is the talk that I gave at MIX 08 The official description was: Learn how to increase what a designer can do with WPF and Silverlight using our designer’s code “toolbox.” Here are 10 simple concepts that will give you an edge when making your best ideas a reality. We share the code, teach [...]

I had a loner Tablet PC at work for a few weeks when I was at Microsoft and I came accross a utility that lets you create a font from your own handwriting. I actually really like the way mine turned out. Not sure where the “Neato” came from, but it is pretty neat to [...]