Hello.

I had a really good set of conversations about the issue of loading styles and new UI designs into an Avalon app. Thanks go out to Micheal Latta and Jason [MobiForm]Here’s some of the conversation and some comments I have around them.It is certanly possible to load different UI controls into a window at run-time. AVPad does this now to a degree. The real issue is going to be hooking the UI up to the code behind class(es).

I was looking around the Internet to see if anyone has automatically loaded a resource file so that you can skin an XAML app.It turns out that it has been done and is quite easy.http://www.dave5.com/blog/Trackback.aspx?guid=47778bf9-abaf-46a9-aeee-d37ae2658fbe shows a simple method (I think based on the link below). Simply it loads a resource and then assigns it to the application.http://blogs.msdn.com/mitchw/articles/68541.aspx: shows a more complete example of how to load a “Style” resource at runtime.

I have been thinking and looking into whether I should code up what I am thinking, I would like to pass it by you guys to see if it is possible or has been done before (or if there is an easier way).Basically my thoughts have been these: In Avalon, is it possible to completely change the layout and styles at runtime such that I could have “n” different layouts to the same app, all of which are loaded as requested by the user?

I posted around some news groups to find an answer about my crash and a I recieved the following reply from Mike Hillbert.When you’re animating Width or Height, you have to specify both the From and the To, or you have to have specified the base value somewhere (e.g. on the element itself).That’s because when you don’t specify the From or To it gets inferred from the base (unanimated) value. And in the case of Width and Height, the base value often isn’t known until later when layout runs.

Wow, I have just answered all the questions on Start.com and it gives you the following link http://www.start.com/myw3b/ to their new beta rss/search/info/do-everything-you-need site. Needless to say, this and the google services are bringing a much needed kick of interactivity into websites. :)

I recieved some answers to my questions :) They were quite helpful, so I will document them here just incase they ever help anyone :).1) In the control template you can use RoutedEvents to start and stop a time line. (I don’t know how I missed this). You can also use them inside DataTemplates as well. <ControlTemplate.Triggers> <EventTrigger RoutedEvent=“Mouse.MouseEnter”> <EventTrigger.Actions> <BeginAction TargetName=“Timeline”> <StopAction TargetName=“Timeline2”> <EventTrigger.Actions> </EventTrigger> </ControlTemplate.Triggers>These triggers are able to be placed inside a style.

Has anyone experienced a crash with XAMLPad (I have not tried creating a complete app yet) where by if I have to following:<settertimeline path=“(MenuItem.Width)” name=“Timeline”> <doubleanimation autoreverse=“True” duration=“0:0:0.5” to=“150” from=“100”> </settertimeline>And I remove the “From” Attribute it causes XAMLPad to crash.<settertimeline path=“(MenuItem.Width)” name=“Timeline”> <doubleanimation autoreverse=“True” duration=“0:0:0.5” to=“150”> </settertimeline>This timeline is used to do a basic animation of the width on a menu item. I am not including the “From” attribute because I want the default value of the MenuItem’s width to be the start value.

I had a really cool idea (well I thought it was cool anyway).I was going to extend my “GelButton” Menu items XAML Example with some extra functionality. I was going to make each of the “GelButtons” ever-so-slightly throb when the user hovers over them. Even if the previous post never gets used I thought it would be a good learning experience.It has been a good learning experience because I have found a few things that can’t be done in XAML (May CTP).

I have been messing around with the Map CTP Avalon Framework… I am still early in the learning stages as you can see by the following example.Basically this xaml (load it up in XAMLPad) creates a menu which has a custom style assigned to it. This style draws each of the menu items as “GelButtons”. It took me a while to work out what to do. Initially I created a ControlTemplate, infact I needed to create a HeaderTemplate in the style.

Just a quick note or two about my previous post. It no longer animates like the Animated Gel Button The GelButton idea was actually modified code from the same site as I mentioned, however it was a different page.

Something I have learnt today whilst playing with IHttpModule is that when the Init method is called you shouldn’t access the Context method the HttpAplication exposes because it seems like it is not fully constructed (things like the HttpMethod, QueryString and Form properties are not created).However, if you handle an event like such:context.BeginRequest += new EventHandler(Context_BeginRequest);then once you enter the EventHandler, the Context Object (attached to the source parameter) seems to be fully constructed.

I have just been thinking about a subject that has always concerned me with ASP.Net. By Default ASP.Net won’t allow certain characters through on the querystring that could potentially cause security problems (such as Cross Site Scripting attacks). The Developer has the opportunity to turn this feature off, but would be required to validate all the elements themselves.I have just been thinking, wouldn’t it be good if when a Page Class is defined you could provide some predicates that must be true for the page not to invalid.

Here we go I have updated my code, i.e added some comments to it… It produces a fish eye effect described by Jason Waltman based on the paper: “Devernay, F., and O. Faugeras. Straight Lines Have to Be Straight. 2001. 13 March 2001. http://devernay.free.fr/publis/distcalib-mva.pdf. Abstract. Most algorithms in 3D computer vision rely on the pinhole camera model because of its simplicity, whereas video optics, especially low-cost wide-angle or fish-eye lenses, generate a lot of non-linear distortion which can be critical.

yay!

Moved the Blog To Kinlan.co.uk I have moved the blog onto Kinlan.co.uk, still using the blogger stuff. But I thought it would be nice to have it in my own domain so I can track it better…. I am really impressed with Blogger :)

It wasn’t too hard…. I did take a peak at the code behind the fish eye that Jason Waltman describes. I did this purely because the code I implemented seemed to match the pseduo code that was written but my results were not quite correct. I looked at the code, converted it to c# implemented it as a filter in the Tiger Image Processing Library (Tiger Imaging) for C# here and it worked pretty much the first time it was tan.

I get so many things running through my head that I want to do. I was looking at the Yahoo search API and I found that you can search for images. So I decided to do some tests to see what I can do with the results and how easy it would be in C# to load the images (it is really easy, I was well chuffed when it all clicked into place)string query = http://api.

There is a really cool (At least I think it is) Image Processing Library (Tiger Imaging) for C# here (Code Project). It comes with complete source code and provides some really cool filters that enable you to perform a bit of image manipluation easily. It is by a guy called Andrew Kirillov and he has another article on the code project here where he demonstrates Montion Capture using his library.I am just wondering if I should create some filters (such as fish eye that Jason Waltman describes).

It took me absolutly ages to find why I couldn’t run GACUtil or the RegAsm.exe from a build script. It is because VS2005 Beta 2 doesn’t seem to load the PATH Envionment variables at build time. This results in VS2005 Beta 2 not being able to find the files it needs. There is a simple cure to this problemThe Following doesn’t work and causes build errors (because the build script doesn’t run)

I have just done a little test to see if any of my ideas are any good.Here are the results of my first test. We Can Build You [Paperback] by Dick, Philip K. @ £2.99 Exploratory Social Network Analysis with Pajek (Structural Analysis in the… @ £18.90 The Prince (Penguin Classics) [Paperback] by Machiavelli, Niccolo; Grafton… @ £0.66 The Origin of Species: Or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle… @ £1.