CPSC 481 Tutorial 10 Expression Blend Brennan Jones bdgjones@ucalgary.ca (based on tutorials by Bon Adriel Aseniero and David Ledo)
Expression Blend Enables you to build rich and compelling applications for the desktop and web. Enables you to take full advantage of the underlying power of the platform. Rapid prototyping without writing code 3D transformations Pixel effects (blur, glow, ripple, etc.) Animation Visually edit the template of a control easily on the design surface, redesigning it to perfectly fulfill the function it will play within an application.
Basic Idea Design your interface in Expression Blend Code the logic and interaction in Visual Studio
Starting Expression Blend
Starting a Project Click on New Project if you want to start a project directly in Expression Blend. Choose this one for this tutorial. Click on Open Project if you want to use an existing project (which may have been created in Visual Studio).
Starting a Project Select WPF Application Name it Hit OK
The Interface Project/Solution viewer
The Interface Tools
Tools
The Interface Drawing Board
The Interface Objects and Timeline Layers
Objects This is where you see your Visuals Arranged as a reversed stack Visuals on the bottom are on top Also true for Visuals inside Containers which are inside another Container Think Layers and Groups
The Interface Object Properties
Properties Selecting a visual here brings up that visual s properties in here.
Properties Brushes Properties Used to edit the background fill, border stroke, opacity, etc. of a visual Uses RGB and alpha values or the hex value of a colour Nice resource for named colours: http://cloford.com/resources/col ours/500col.htm
Properties Appearance Used to change the appearance of a visual by setting its visibility and opacity, or adding effects to it such as blur or dropdown shadows
Properties Layout Used to change how the window will appear on the screen, or how a visual will flow with other visuals in a container. Use this to edit sizes, positions, and alignments.
Properties Some properties are only available to specific types of visuals. E.g., only windows can have an icon property or a window state property (maximized, minimized, etc.). These properties can be set in the Code Behind as well.
Coding Choose View Split View To view the XAML Editor
Coding You can code directly in Expression Blend, BUT it is highly suggested to use Visual Studio in parallel with it for coding. Why? Because you gain access to Visual Studio s rich set of tools for coding (refactor, debugger, etc.). Use Expression Blend for designing the GUI, use Visual Studio to code the logic.
Hands On We will create a picture viewer application using Expression Blend and Visual Studio. Functionalities: 1. Home screen 2. Page to see all photos 3. View each photo
PicturO
Window Select the window Change its width & height to 800x600
Window Select Background Change the Background colour to #FF353535
Window WindowStyle = None ResizeMode = NoResize Title = PicturO
Window Rename the grid contained in the window to MainGrid. Insert a new grid within it, call it SplashGrid.
Grids For both the MainGrid and SplashGrid: Set the width and height to Auto Set the HorizontalAlignment and VerticalAlignment to Stretch
Start Screen
Start screen Path: BackgroundShape TextBlock: P TextBlock: AppTitle Button: ViewPhotosButton Button: ExitButton Button: MinimizeButton
Animation Can be done in C# WPF using Storyboards. Can also be done easily using Expression Blend.
Animation On the Object & Timeline tab, click + This will add a Storyboard Resource
Animation As the Animation starts to record Edit a Visual s property at a starting time then add a new Keyframe to the ending time and put in the new value of the property.
Controls Visuals such as Buttons, Containers, and Shapes are called Controls. They have an underlying template specifying how they should look. The template is customizable.
Custom Button Add a Button to your window Right click -> Edit Template -> Create Empty Call it TileButton You can then apply this template to other buttons later on
Custom Button Good Interfaces should be responsive, so let us add feedback to our custom button when it gets hovered over. Add these: Cover: A transparent rectangle on top of the button Content: The content (text) presenter HoverColor: The coloured rectangle that shows up when the button gets hovered over
Custom Button Click + Property Change the second and third dropdowns to: IsMouseOver and True respectively On the Triggers tab, add the IsMouseOver = true event This means that every time the mouse is over our button, the animation will be triggered
Custom Button On the first row under the Activated when tab, select grid on the first dropdown box
Custom Button Click + on the Actions when activating tab Add a new Storyboard The Storyboard will then start recording
Custom Button Now our button gives us feedback Add an event to it that closes the app in Visual Studio ExitButton.Click this.close();
Applying our Template Add a minimize button to our app (if not already there) Right click on the button -> Edit Template -> Apply Resource -> choose your template Add an event to it MinimizeButton.Click this.windowstate = WindowState.Minimize
Photos
Create a new grid This is where we will show our photos It has a ScrollViewer that has a UniformGrid inside of it called PhotoViewerGrid
Visibility Separate our different views into Grids (if not already done) If SplashGrid is visible, then PhotoGrid should be hidden, and vice versa
Photo Tile Here, we will need to load photos into tiles which we call PhotoTiles Create a Grid, and inside it, add an Image control and a TextBlock The Image control will contain our photo The TextBlock will contain the title of the photo
Photo Tile Great! We now have a PhotoTile But wait Do we really want to do this for every photo we have? No! Use UserControls
User Controls User-defined Controls (e.g., CommentBox) that can be used as templates within a project. Useful for when you have multiple things that should look the same but have different content.
Photo Tile Right click and turn our PhotoTile grid into a UserControl We can now reuse it for many photos!
Loading Photos On the Code Behind Create a Class called PhotoDB This class will have a LoadPhotos method and will contain all of the paths to our photos in a string array
Loading Photos In PhotoDB.cs: class PhotoDB { private string[] photos = { }; public string[] Photos { get { return this.photos; } } } public void LoadPhotos(string path) { try { photos = System.IO.Directory.GetFiles(path); } catch (Exception) { // Do nothing } }
Loading Photos We will then access the photos in this class and create PhotoTileControls for each of them, then add them to the PhotoViewerGrid
Viewing a Photo
Viewing a Photo Again, we will create a UserControlfor this Start with drawing a grid that has TextBlock, an Image control, and a StackPanel for comments Turn it into a UserControl called PhotoPageControl
Viewing a Photo Go to the code where we create each PhotoTileControl and subscribe to its MouseDown event Add this
Viewing a Photo Collapse all of the other views Create an instance of the PhotoPageControl and populate it with the data from the PhotoTileControl
Viewing a Photo Now, clicking on a PhotoTile will open up a photo page. But we re stuck! We can t go back to the photo list from the photo page. Solve this by adding a back button inside the PhotoPageControl.
Viewing a Photo
Extending this To allow for comments within the PhotoPageControl, create a CommentBox UserControl that has TextBlocks for the name of commenter and the comment, and a delete button. Add TextBoxes so that when someone types on it and presses Enter (or a send button), it will generate a CommentBox with the respective data from the TextBox fields. Append the CommentBox to a Scrollable StackPanel within the PhotoPageControl.
Extending this NO! You cannot submit this example app as your project. You may reuse code from this example, as long as you citeit. Hope you learned something new!