nibbles tutorials blog

PathLayout Tutorial

nibbles — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 17:50:04 +0000

There is a new tutorial available showing how to work with PathLayout in Expression Blend 4. This sample actually shipped as part of the Sample Pack 4, but here you can get more details on how to build your own text on a path. It’s easy and fun

http://www.nibblestutorials.net

-Celso

New content for Expression Blend 3 and Silverlight 3

nibbles — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 20:09:46 +0000

Today Microsoft released new versions of Expression Blend 3 and Silverlight 3. To celebrate such remarkable milestone Nibbles Tutorials is also publishing new content. Today you will find:

http://nibblestutorials.net

Sample Pack 3 deconstructed – Step-by-step explanation about the applications that shipped as part of Expression Blend 3, including tons of new features in Blend and SketchFlow. This week we have tutorials for two new samples: Zune 3D and PCGaming Sketch.

New Sample: Billboard 3D – There is a new sample available for download using Perspective 3D to create a billboard panel that rotates four different images.

New Behaviors – You can also download two new Behaviors. ListBoxItemSendToTop will bring a ListBoxItem to the top when you roll over it (useful when you have items overlapping each other). And GoToUserControlState, which allow you to trigger States from inside other controls (it will look up the Visual Tree and trigger the State defined in the topmost User Control).

Hope you enjoy the new content! We will bring more Tutorials shortly…
-Celso

New Nibbles Tutorials running on Silverlight 2

nibbles — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 07:33:11 +0000

Yesterday Microsoft announced the release of Silverlight 2. What a joy! This is a quantum leap from version 1 and of course I had to update Nibbles Tutorials to use the cool new features.

In this version you will find a better navigation model, an updated design, a new sample running on Silverlight 2 (X Tune-up), an easier way to see the tutorials which are all expanded, and lots of small improvements.

This is just the beginning. New samples and videos will follow shortly.

Hope you enjoy it!

http://nibblestutorials.net

New Silverlight 2 Sample – Panoramic 360º

nibbles — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 19:27:36 +0000

This sample loads a panoramic image using data from XML. Three copies of the image are placed in a ScrollViewer, and that’s it! You have a Panoramic 360º Viewer.

You can change the XML to add your own images and turn this app into a photo gallery.

Download from:
http://nibblestutorials.net

From the Home Page, open Samples > Silverlight 2 and click 360º Panoramic View.

-Celso

New Tutorials and Samples for Blend 2.5

nibbles — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 07:07:43 +0000

Microsoft has just released two great products – Blend 2.5 June 2008 Preview and Silverlight 2 Beta 2. That means we have new stuff to learn, so I’ve prepared four new tutorials and two new samples to help you get up to speed with the updates.

Nibbles Tutorials also has new features:

Preview
Now you can preview a sample/tutorial before diving into the details (only Silverlight projects have this feature, not WPF ones).

Download
A new way to download projects/samples was implemented. Now a window will open with the options to preview/download. This will fix a security problem with Vista users.

http://www.nibblestutorials.net

Tutorials

The tutorials cover the new Visual State Manager. The first two tutorials show how to create States to interact with a photo (Introduction to States). The other two show how easy is to create a Button Style from scratch, without using any code, and then apply that style to other buttons (Creating a Button Style).

Samples

There are two new samples:

Oxigen 360º view
Peter Blois, from the Expression Team, developed a new Control called Image Sequencer, which has a UI that you can change in Blend – pretty cool!

Grand Piano
This is a WPF and Silverlight 1.0 sample that I was able to re-build in Blend 2.5 (Silverlight 2) in just half-hour using the new Visual State Manager (States).

Hope you enjoy it!
-Celso

Silverlight 2 Beta 2 and new tutorials

nibbles — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 18:21:36 +0000

This morning at TechEd Microsoft announced that later this week we will have a new release of Silverlight 2 Beta 2. There are some really cool new features that will be especially interesting to Designers.

With Beta 2 we will have a new templating model called Visual State Manager and, of course, Blend 2.5 June Preview will support it. Later this week I will publish a few new tutorials to help you get up to speed with this new model.

More details about this release:

· UI Framework: Beta 2 includes improvements in animation support, error handling and reporting, automation and accessibility support, keyboard input support, and general performance. This release also provides more compatibility between Silverlight and WPF.

· Rich Controls: Beta 2 includes a new templating model called Visual State Manager that allows for easier templating for controls. Other features include the introduction of TabControl, text wrapping and scrollbars for TextBox, and for DataGrid additions include Autosize, Reorder, Sort, performance increases and more. Controls are now in the runtime instead of packaged with the application.

· Networking Support: Beta 2 includes improved Cross Domain support and security enhancements, upload support for WebClient, and duplex communications (“push” from server to Silverlight client).

· Rich Base Class Library: Beta 2 includes improved threading abilities, LINQ-to-JSON, ADO.NET Data Services support, better support for SOAP, and various other improvements to make networking and data handling easier.

· Deep Zoom: Beta 2 introduces a new XML-based file format for Deep Zoom image tiles, as well as a new MultiScaleTileSource that enables existing tile databases to utilize Deep Zoom. Better notification for sub-images enter the view is another improvement in Silverlight 2 Beta 2.

-Celso

Sample Pack 2 available in Blend 2

nibbles — Thu, 01 May 2008 19:56:54 +0000

Expression Blend 2 (and the whole Expression Studio 2) was announced today! As part of the package you can get six new Samples built using Blend 2 (Sample Pack 2 – including Silverlight 1.0 and WPF). They are available in the Welcome Screen (Help > Welcome Screen > Samples).

Follow the Nibbles tutorials link and download Blend 2!

http://nibblestutorials.net

Brief description of what you will find in the samples:

Blend Player (Silverlight 1.0)
Player template from Expression Encoder that was re-skinned using Blend.

Button Gallery (Silverlight 1.0)
Simple example of a Button class that can be used to create Silverlight 1.0 buttons.

Magnifying Glass (Silverlight 1.0)
Move the magnifying glass around to see details of butterflies. You can also play an animation.

Note Table (WPF)
Import folders with images and create annotations, just like a whiteboard.

Smooth Blends (WPF)
A great example of how we can re-style a List Box in WPF!

Web Search (WPF)
Searches the web using Live Search API. You can search web and images at the same time.

Hope you enjoy them!
-Celso

blend 2 september preview is out

nibbles — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 17:47:52 +0000

This is the most exciting Blend release, and because of that we’ve prepared a few new sections at Nibbles Tutorials to explain some of the new features in Blend 2 September Preview.

There is a new Sample (Lava Lamp) that shows an example of Vertex Animation in Blend. Don’t miss it!

http://www.nibblestutorials.net

new wpf samples available

nibbles — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 04:49:58 +0000

You can download two new samples for WPF in the Nibbles Tutorials:

http://www.nibblestutorials.net/
Go to Samples > WPF Samples to download them.

First sample: T-Rex 3D
You can see how easy is to work with 3D in Blend & WPF. This sample uses a pretty big 3D file (~5 Mb just for the geometry). Five buttons trigger a few animations that move the camera to show different angles of the T-Rex. But be aware… 3D demands good hardware!

Second sample: Planets 3D
Another 3D sample, but now showing big textures. Note that the buttons have 3D content inside of their Control Template. Nice WPF!

Also Note that there are NO CODE in these samples. All XAML created using blend. Nice!

-Celso

New Session available – Samples!

nibbles — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 06:42:03 +0000

You can access a new session from the Nibbles home page: Samples. In this session you will find complete projects in Silverlight and WPF, but they are not explained step-by-step like the tutorials. However, they will also be short projects, in order to be easily understood. To start, we have two samples about Silverlight and RSS Feeds / XML.

The first sample gets an RSS feed from the Weather Channel, and shows how Silverlight can turn meteorology into something fun! And the second one populates a custom list box with new releases from Netflix.

XML is easy in Silverlight. Give it a try…
http://www.nibblestutorials.net

-Celso