Shine Draw

Today, Shinedraw will surprise you!!!

http://silverlike.net

It is a Free Silverlight Directory powered by Shinedraw.com

We believe Silverlight, which is used in more websites everyday, has several beautiful free controls, components and tools that will help you develop websites faster and better.

It is not easy to find the free controls as they are hidden inside the blogs of Silverlight developers or .NET products websites and there are still not so many resources where you can read about Silverlight.

Silverlike.net have collected more than 100 free Silverlight controls, components & tools for you. You can see the Demo directly and download the code there. A reference website is also added in the Controls.

Hope you enjoy it and please kindly leave comments

Today, I would like to introduce you a site called “UX Passion”.

Vibor Cipan, who is the site author and Microsoft MVP, demonstrated a lot of hands on and useful resources on Microsoft Expression technology. He is also passionate on enhancing the user experience using the Silverlight and WPF technology.

So far, he has published more than 70 articles. All of the them come with details explanation and numerous screenshots. It is absolutely a good site for beginners.

Some of his tutorial includes:

• Image reflection effect in WPF with Expression Blend
   
• Enable and show context menu on left click in WPF
   
• Convert SVG to XAML and use it in Silverlight or WPF applications?
  

Take a look on his site. I am sure you can feel the passion of his devotion.

• Falling Snow

  
  

  Very beautiful snow effect.

  Original Post

• Mac Style Button Tray (Fish Eye Style)

  
  

  Mac Style Button Tray control. Simple and easy to use!

  Original Post

• TextBlock Text Trimming

  
  

  In Silverlight, you always have to deal with various browser size and display something exactly the same across browser. The problem is especially important for text display. Somehow, if you only have a limted size for text display and the drawback is that some texts are cropped. Therefore, we might want to have a solution to display “…” when some texts need to be trim. Here comes to a solution.

  Original Post

• Loading external assembly

  
  

  Loading external libraries is a very effective method to minimize the application file size. You need to use the reflection to create obejct dynamically as well.

  Original Post

• Create Gradient Background in XAML

  
  

  Most of the time when you are using Visual Studio and you dont’ want to open Blend for just setting a very Gradient Background! This resources surely can help you!

• Upload file using File Dialog

  
  

  The coding below demonstrating how you might utilize your FileDialog to upload files from your local disk to server.

  The code demonstrated the following:
  1. Limited the selection of JPG and PNG files only
  2. Only 1 file can be selected
  3. Upload the file with the corresponding file name
  4. How to get the file data inside PHP

• Keyboard Control

  
  

  An advanced virtual Keyboard controls with multilanguage support. They keyboard is fully customizable with you own keys as well.

  Original Post

• Text on A Path

  
  

  Display your text on any path geometry. Easy and simple to use!

  Original Post

• Silverlight Multiple File Upload

  
  

  Upload multiple files concurrently. Provides a rich User interface a lot of configurable options.

  Original Post

• Floatable Window

  
  

  A refactoring of Silverlight’s ChildWindow control, to enable both modal and non-modal uses, but retain template and functionality of what the ChildWindow provides. This is an extended Controls from ChildWindow in Silverlight 3 Toolkit.

  Original Post

http://silverlight.shinedraw.com

The alpha release is alive!!! I have created a new sub domain (http://silverlight.shinedraw.com) and this application will reside on this domain at the beginning.

So far, I have spent around 25 hours in making the application. The approximate break down of the works is:

• 6 hours: Layout Design and Planning
• 12 hours: C# Coding
• 7 hours: Integrating with Drupal

Click Silverlight Resource Directory to preview the application now!

Feature Highlight

This is just preliminary release. Don’t expect too much first. But I am sure it will become much stronger very soon!

1. Listing of commonly used resources
   
   
2. Deep Linking using Navigation framework
3. Access the download link easily
4. Display useful coding
   
   
5. Out of browser feature
6. Display the application directly
   

    
    

After working for a couple of hours, I have came up will the application prototype. Click on the image below to open the application.

Click here to open the Silverlight Resources Directory Prototype.

Development Flow

I will firstly focus on the functional features rather and then the user experience. The detailed flow is:

1. Complete all the Silverlight logic using sample data
2. Integrate the system using Drupal.
3. Alpha release to the public
4. Implement the User System
5. Beta release
6. Implement various kind of animation effects
7. SEO friendly
8. Rating system to filer out most useful resources
9. Continue the development based on user feedback.