I'm thinking about writing a UserControl in VB.NET. If any of you have seen the nifty "LaunchBar" that Mac OS X uses you'll know what i mean.
The thing is that this control should be a control which you can use in any Winform application, it's purpose should be like the Outlook bar.
Anyway, I've been trying to write this control using GDI+ and I keep running into problems. I still don't know if the performance will be good enough. I really don't know if Direct X would solv the problem eidther since I'm doing my own manipulation of the bitmaps (based on my old school demo effect skills
).
I'm not really sure if there are any nice lens effects in the DX API, or even if it's possible to do this in a easy way with DX.
Last time I coded DX was with version 5, and I really don't know if it's worth the effort relearning everything again.
Also if there are better ways to optimize the GDI+ code then there would be no point in rewriting it for DX. This is how I do it atm.
Startup:
- Create an instance of the UserControl (called LaunchBar)
- Set background image property (shadowed for my own purpose)
- Add Launch Items (Images)
The Launchbar keeps a:
- bitmap the size of the control called _Layer
- bitmap the size of the manipulation area called _LastSaved
- position of the _LastSaved bitmap called _LastPos
Initialize:
- Background image is tiled over the _Layer bitmap
- Each of the Launch item Icons are drawn on the _Layer bitmap aswell
- The _Layer bitmap is drawn on the UserControl
When mouse moves over the LaunchBar (MouseMove event):
- Check if the _LastSaved keeps a reference (If is Nothing) to a bitmap - If so, paint it back on the UserControl where it belongs
- Save the current mouse position in _LastPos and cut out the new _LastSaved bitmap (using Bitmap.Clone(Rect, PixelFormat))
- Send the _LastSaved bitmap into a method that creates a new bitmap called _Modified. The _Modified bitmap is based on the _LastSaved but the pixels are moved around to create a nifty effect. The _Modified bitmap is then returned to the caller.
- The _Modified bitmap is drawn on the UserControl
If there is a better way to do this, please give me feedback about it
/Frasse
The thing is that this control should be a control which you can use in any Winform application, it's purpose should be like the Outlook bar.
Anyway, I've been trying to write this control using GDI+ and I keep running into problems. I still don't know if the performance will be good enough. I really don't know if Direct X would solv the problem eidther since I'm doing my own manipulation of the bitmaps (based on my old school demo effect skills
).I'm not really sure if there are any nice lens effects in the DX API, or even if it's possible to do this in a easy way with DX.
Last time I coded DX was with version 5, and I really don't know if it's worth the effort relearning everything again.
Also if there are better ways to optimize the GDI+ code then there would be no point in rewriting it for DX. This is how I do it atm.
Startup:
- Create an instance of the UserControl (called LaunchBar)
- Set background image property (shadowed for my own purpose)
- Add Launch Items (Images)
The Launchbar keeps a:
- bitmap the size of the control called _Layer
- bitmap the size of the manipulation area called _LastSaved
- position of the _LastSaved bitmap called _LastPos
Initialize:
- Background image is tiled over the _Layer bitmap
- Each of the Launch item Icons are drawn on the _Layer bitmap aswell
- The _Layer bitmap is drawn on the UserControl
When mouse moves over the LaunchBar (MouseMove event):
- Check if the _LastSaved keeps a reference (If is Nothing) to a bitmap - If so, paint it back on the UserControl where it belongs
- Save the current mouse position in _LastPos and cut out the new _LastSaved bitmap (using Bitmap.Clone(Rect, PixelFormat))
- Send the _LastSaved bitmap into a method that creates a new bitmap called _Modified. The _Modified bitmap is based on the _LastSaved but the pixels are moved around to create a nifty effect. The _Modified bitmap is then returned to the caller.
- The _Modified bitmap is drawn on the UserControl
If there is a better way to do this, please give me feedback about it
/Frasse