This month Well Formed kicks of a new series article that explains how to do image transitions for presentations, demo's or just cool effects in GDI+. This month the timing and general operations engine is presented along with a simple image fade transition. Over the next couple of months you'll see how to create slides, cuts, blends, blinds and other transition styles that all go together to make a finished transition library.

The fade transition in operation

Configuration

Have you ever had to write a configuration program for an application that saved things like the application window position and size, the contents of properties and even the contents of other components on the form and then, a month later had to re-write the same thing all over again for a different application? I know I have.

The answer to application setting persistence turns out to be XML and the reflection API's. This month, Well Formed presents EasyConfig. A simple component that can turn your goldfish-brained application that forgets everything straight away into an elephant that will never forget. EasyConfig lets you save form properties, application settings and even the contents of other controls such as TextBoxes, ComboBoxes, CheckBoxes and just about anything else so that these settings are loaded right back in the next time the application runs and it works on every application regardless of the form design. All you need to do is add a few simple attributes to your class and the component does the rest.

Application Setting Persistence with EasyConfig.

Design-time mouse operations

Setting the properties of a control at design-time is a breeze with VisualStudio.NET and the RAD environment has made our lives so much easier. Wouldn't it be great though if you could make those really visual properties adjustable with the mouse directly on the control instead of using a dropdown editor or the keyboard. A visual component like a line could be dragged to the right place instead of having to work out where it's pixels were and graphical controls could be interactively edited.

The second feature article in Well Formed this month explains how to get mouse input at design time. How to paint grab-handles on your controls and how to use them to alter visible properties using the mouse.

Design-time mouse interactions.

The control in the example shown here enables you to drag the focal-point of a complex gradient around at design time so that you can set the appearance of the control intuitively. This technique can be applied to many other controls once you know how.

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Find out what you've missed in previous months. 

August, 2003. 

September, 2003. 

October, 2003. 

November, 2003. 

December, 2003

January, 2004

February 2004.

March 2004