Thanks to all who pointed out that our videos had been taken offline - the lovely people at Microsoft used to host them for free but with the advent of Azure have removed that capability. Luckily... SeekDotNet to the rescue - they're quite happy for the videos to be hosted alongside the rest of the content. So, in short, they're back!
Happy Vixing!
Saturday 17 April 2010
Tuesday 23 February 2010
Colour Schemes Editor in Silverlight
At a complete tangent to our normal ramblings, we've just added a tool for editing colour schemes to the Vixer website
It's not terribly relevant to most Vixering but everything else aside it's quite good fun, and it's built in Silverlight so it's very snappy to use. If you're in the business of changing colours in CSS, HTML or XAML files, or anything where colours are stored in text as their hexadecimal representation (e.g. "#ff00ff00" for opaque green), it's a breeze to use.
We got a bit sick of looking at CSS files full of colour representations and not being sure what colour they represented - it's fine if your favourite web site editor will read the files but stray slightly from the path and you're on your own, hence putting the effort into this tool.
We've also encountered quite a lot of XAML that originally came from the fabulous Expression Blend - if you're just interested in editing the colours in a gradient for example this is quicker than sucking your project into Blend, and it's especially relevant if you don't have access to the the full project, or if someone's hacked the Blend-friendliness out of the XAML.
If you'd be interested in getting your hands on the Silverlight source code for the colour picker (or "color picker" as they call it over The Water) or the schemes editor, or indeed any of it, drop us a line via the website, or here - if there's sufficient interest we'll put it up on CodeProject or CodePlex for all the world to modify.
The tool's out on http://www.vixer.co.uk/schemes.aspx - let us know if you like it, or indeed otherwise!
It's not terribly relevant to most Vixering but everything else aside it's quite good fun, and it's built in Silverlight so it's very snappy to use. If you're in the business of changing colours in CSS, HTML or XAML files, or anything where colours are stored in text as their hexadecimal representation (e.g. "#ff00ff00" for opaque green), it's a breeze to use.
We got a bit sick of looking at CSS files full of colour representations and not being sure what colour they represented - it's fine if your favourite web site editor will read the files but stray slightly from the path and you're on your own, hence putting the effort into this tool.
We've also encountered quite a lot of XAML that originally came from the fabulous Expression Blend - if you're just interested in editing the colours in a gradient for example this is quicker than sucking your project into Blend, and it's especially relevant if you don't have access to the the full project, or if someone's hacked the Blend-friendliness out of the XAML.
If you'd be interested in getting your hands on the Silverlight source code for the colour picker (or "color picker" as they call it over The Water) or the schemes editor, or indeed any of it, drop us a line via the website, or here - if there's sufficient interest we'll put it up on CodeProject or CodePlex for all the world to modify.
The tool's out on http://www.vixer.co.uk/schemes.aspx - let us know if you like it, or indeed otherwise!
Thursday 19 November 2009
Wednesday 18 November 2009
Another new build....
Hallooo - ahead of a bit of a push for testers, we've put up a new build with some cosmetic changes and the squishing of one or two tiresome buglets.
The "die" date on this version is Jan 2nd 2010, and as always there'll new version up there well before then.
Keep your comments coming in - interestingly your feedback to date's going to take Vixer in a direction we hadn't originally anticipated, so please don't feel your input isn't valued....
The "die" date on this version is Jan 2nd 2010, and as always there'll new version up there well before then.
Keep your comments coming in - interestingly your feedback to date's going to take Vixer in a direction we hadn't originally anticipated, so please don't feel your input isn't valued....
Friday 6 November 2009
WPF and Direct2D
Seems to us to be the most obvious thing in the world to want to hit Direct2D from WPF but there's a severe scarcity of doc about how to do it.
We spent many happy hours hosting a C++ HWND in a WPF app and pinging messages to it, but then we stumbled on Mahmoud's piece about the Windows API Code Pack and our lives changed for the better.
In case you're interested, WPF has a retained mode model, so if you draw something it remembers what you drew for you, so when the window's repainted or resized it knows how to redraw. All of which is fine, but there are circumstances where you want immediate-mode graphics, so you own the display list and take ownership of the drawing.
Why might that be? Well, if your display list (i.e. the list of stuff you want to draw) is coming from somewhere else - a CAD system maybe, or a database - you don't want to keep it twice, and if it's hundreds of thousands of elements you're trying to do something WPF wasn't designed for. Direct2D, on the other hand, most definitely was.
But why do us Vixerer's care? Suffice to say Vixer's going to have a little sister sometime soon....
We spent many happy hours hosting a C++ HWND in a WPF app and pinging messages to it, but then we stumbled on Mahmoud's piece about the Windows API Code Pack and our lives changed for the better.
In case you're interested, WPF has a retained mode model, so if you draw something it remembers what you drew for you, so when the window's repainted or resized it knows how to redraw. All of which is fine, but there are circumstances where you want immediate-mode graphics, so you own the display list and take ownership of the drawing.
Why might that be? Well, if your display list (i.e. the list of stuff you want to draw) is coming from somewhere else - a CAD system maybe, or a database - you don't want to keep it twice, and if it's hundreds of thousands of elements you're trying to do something WPF wasn't designed for. Direct2D, on the other hand, most definitely was.
But why do us Vixerer's care? Suffice to say Vixer's going to have a little sister sometime soon....
Saturday 24 October 2009
Yip, still alive...
Halloo - well all sorts of stuff's been going on to keep us busy. At a dull technical level the very astute amongst you might have noticed we've moved to a new hoster for our sites, but more importantly wearing our PollyTiles hats we've been engrossed in making the world's biggest jigsaw.
At a mere 1.2 million pieces it's a monster, and it's actually the second world record we've been involved in!
On the Vixer front, we're adding some new goodies, more of which very soon.....
At a mere 1.2 million pieces it's a monster, and it's actually the second world record we've been involved in!
On the Vixer front, we're adding some new goodies, more of which very soon.....
Thursday 24 September 2009
Another New Free Version of Vixer?
Incredible, indeed. A new version crept onto the www yesterday with an expiry date in November, so we'd suggest you replace your current version with this one.
Your projects will still work - nothing at that low level needed to be changed, and if it did we'd have made sure your work was safe.
So.. download it, play with it, create superb videos, become internationally recognised and ludicrously wealthy, and... ah... drop us a note about it...
Your projects will still work - nothing at that low level needed to be changed, and if it did we'd have made sure your work was safe.
So.. download it, play with it, create superb videos, become internationally recognised and ludicrously wealthy, and... ah... drop us a note about it...
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