What are the best practices for Windows 8 xaml apps to bring in the Visual Design assets?
We started designing our app in Adobe Illustrator so all graphics would be vector based and scalable. Now we have the screen designs, but can't find a way to bring them into the actual app (xaml/c#) . I thought there is a way to import SVG to Visual Studio or Blend, but we can't find it. For Windows Phone there even was an Illustrator import feature.
The Import from Illustrator feature is missing from the current version of Blend, unfortunately. You can however use Expression Blend 4 to import the relevant XAML form Illustrator and then copy/paste into Blend 5.
Cheers
Laurent
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Importing an Adobe Illustrator file in Blend for Visual Studio 2013 adds a Canvas and images to my project. But if images are added the import is not a vector graphic any more, right?
I hoped I could import that .ai file, resulting in a Path object, so that I have a vector graphic that could be dynamically scaled by window size in my Visual Studio project.
Is there any solution for that?
I haven't used blend so i am not sure about this issue, but as i understand expression design 4 is now free and can open ai files to convert to xaml. Also i think there are svg to xaml converters if u can get the vector file as svg.
I'm trying to import cad model into blend and then make some storyboard on it.
Idea was to export xaml file from solidworks and then import it to blend.
File open in blend, model is displayed correctly and every thing works until i zoom/move or make any action that results in immediate program crash.
Xaml file is about 5mb, and outside blend works fine in my program i can rotate,zoom it freely with good performance.
Have anyone encountered similar problem, or have good method for converting cad->xaml.
I did when working on an augmented reality feature in a desktop aplication.
My solution was to convert the object to fbx format and use the XMA game studio controls to view it. Then I was able to do what I wish in blend.
The guide for Windows Phone 8 app bars states that AppBar button icons should be 48x48px. It also says that a bunch of sample icons can be found in C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows Phone\v8.0\Icons.
But the images in there are 76x76px. And they work fine, at least on the emulator they do.
So what's the proper size?
So what's the proper size?
76x76, because then you support higher resolutions. If you use 48x48, it'll be scaled up for WXGA and 720p, rather than down (for WVGA), with the quality being slightly worse.
The factor is roughly 1.6, which is the same as for the Tile Sizes
And to prove the point, here's our application, using 76x76 application icons: Skype | Windows Phone Store
They are 48x48px as the people above have said, but the 76x76px ones you are seeing are for devices with a different screen size from that set by Visual Studio as default.
If you are looking for any additional icons do check out Templarian's open-sourced icon project http://modernuiicons.com/. The .zip includes light and dark themes icons as well as the initial Expressions Blend .design file and the .xaml coding of the icon.
They have to be a minimum of 48x48, you can have a bigger (square) size and it will scale down accordingly.
I don't feel as if what I'm asking is ridiculous. Would I be able to import an image of any kind (png, jpeg, etc) into visual studio and then define regions/hotspots to code as buttons? It would kind of be like an expression blend/silverlight thing but if I already had the design in an image format and I just need to put code behind it.
Expression Studio contains tools that can meet your requirements,
http://www.microsoft.com/expression/products/Design_WhatIsExpressionDesign.aspx
For example, by using Design, you can import existing images and export XAML directly, which can later be used in your Visual Studio/Expression Blend projects.
You have to use such separate tools, such as Visual Studio does not have such features built in.
I have done this with an imagemap and hotspots over button graphics in an image the aspx page.
I just installed Visual Basic 2010, went through some tutorials on how to display files, but can't find any material on how to select and embed existing PDF files into a form. Any suggestions or pointers in the right direction would be great, thanks!
Just embed a browser control in your form and navigate that to the PDF file. That should do the trick.
There aren't too many out of the box controls for that. Anyway, this guide might be helpful:
http://visualbasic.about.com/od/quicktips/qt/disppdf.htm
Disclaimer: I work at Atalasoft.
We make a GUI control that can load a bunch of image formats, and an add-on to turn PDF pages into images. The GUI control (ImageViewer) is part of our free SDK (DotImage Photo) and you can learn about the add-on here: http://www.atalasoft.com/products/dotimage/pdf-reader