Scaling application controls size according to surrounding container

Hi Friends,

While developing the application in Windows Presentation Foundation, you might face with issue of scaling the application. If you want to run your application into different display of different resolutions then you might need to scale up/down your application to regain the application controls at the right position as they were present before.

• For the resolution Independence of application, you should place your into the ViewBox which defines a content decorator that can stretch and scale a single child to fill the available space.

• In this way, whenever you will re-size the window, your application controls will also re-size with the same aspect ratio and automatically will get stretched and scaled properly.

• If you are using Expression Blends, then a snapshot of Objects and Timeline is added for your referral as how to add the controls in viewbox.

• In the figure above, Grid contains all the controls which are used inside the application and the same grid is placed inside the viewbox control which is included in the main window.

Enjoy

Data Binding in Expression Blends

Diagram for the Data Binding Concept !

In this article , I will be explaining how to apply and use the data binding feature in Expression Blends 4.

First of all, Start with the Expression Blends 4.

Click on New Project from the file menu.

Look at Expression Studio for Begineers!

Microsoft Expression studio is a suite of professional tools for designing and building windows client applications and rich internet applications.

This includes

1) Expression Blend

2) Expression Web

3) Expression Design

4) Expression Encoder

Expression Blend:

• Expression Blend is a tool for interaction design applications for silverlight and .net platforms. It allows to create complex, highly interactive experiences with ease. This is the sample GUI application that we can make in expression blends. Its highly interactive and very eye catching.
• We have various types of tools such as listbox, textbox, pathlistbox, frame etc. It allows the two way workflow between expression blend and visual studio i.e it allows designing and coding in the single workflow throughout the entire project which has eliminated the need of repeated creation and conversion of graphics in code and hence it saves a lot of time of the developer.
• This also provides data binding feature to bind value of one property to the value of the another property.
• In the latest versions of Blends, Microsoft introduces a exclusive feature of”SketchFlow” which allows rapid prototyping and analyzation of different ideas before moving onto the actual solution.

Expression web:

• Expression web is web development tool in which what you see is what you get compliant standard based websites faster and easier. Expression web also provides coding support for xml, asp.net, php, javascript which makes it even better.
• Expression web has the new feature of super-preview which is basically a cross-browser technique in which the same site is viewed on different browsers to check the compatibility. This is very useful as the developer doesnt have to go outside to see the view of the site. Everything is inside the expression web only.
• Expression web also has the feature of importing the silverlight videos and deep zoom generated videos. Similarly one more feature is one can directly import the psd file as an png image which helps a lot.

Expression Design:

• Expression Design is the designing tool for vector graphic content creation. It is a great compliment to expression web and expression blend as the design can be exported in xaml code which is targeted towards WPF, silverlight based projects in expression blends.

Expression encoder:

• Expression encoder is the encoding tool which simplifies publishing the videos for microsoft silverlight. It supports large number of video formats for importing. You can also use it in a live encoding mode. It also have screen capturing facility to capture the contents of the screen.

Microsoft Expression studio truely lives upto to its name as it provides great collection of powerful tools to express and project your concepts in design and visualization into virtual reality.

Enjoy