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Introduction

In the first part of the series, I introduced the application, and created the “ugly duckling” version, where the end user could already browse the and watch the videos. In this part, I am going to add some bling to the app – namely the Intro animation, the ability to skip it, and to replay it. The Intro animation itself is not created with Silverlight, so I will just use it as a video. This part takes heavy use of Visual States, Behaviors and Easings.

Visual States

The application builds on Sample Data for displaying the videos’ metadata, and it uses Visual States to differentiate between the states of the application.

In the first part of the series, I introduced the application, and created the “ugly duckling” version, where the end user could already browse the and watch the videos. In this part, I am going to add some bling to the app – namely the Intro animation, the ability to skip it, and to replay it. The Intro animation itself is not created with Silverlight, so I will just use it as a video. This part takes heavy use of Visual States, Behaviors and Easings.

That screencast is connected with the Transforming an Ugly Duckling to a Graceful Swan with Expression Blend and Silverlight - Part 2 Intro Animation article.

Here is what happens in the screencast:

Introduction

As I promised earlier on Silverlight Show, this screencast series will show how to create the showcase application shown on www.response.hu (you may want to read the interview to get some background information on the project). The screencast series shows a real life example of how designers can add value to a project, and how a developer can support this effort by creating small, reusable behaviors that allow the designer to tweak things to shape the end result to be exactly as he wanted it.

The first screencast shows how to create the ugly version that I am going to work from in the later parts of the series. The ugly version lists all the videos (or ReferenceItems), and allows the user to see the explanation and play back the showcase videos.

That screencast is connected with the Transforming an Ugly Duckling to a Graceful Swan with Expression Blend and Silverlight - Part I article.

Here is what happens in the screencast:

Paul Yanez presents a video tutorial demonstrating the Transition Preview within Microsoft Expression Blend.

This will save lots of time when creating states and not having to run the project.

 

Gavin Wignall shows a very intersting Silverlight demo, based on physical laws. You should see it.

This example uses no C# work, all the work was done inside Blend using behaviours added from the Farseer Physics Engine.

Alex Knight has a great tutorial up on simple Parent/Child navigation in Silverlight. 

The best part about Silverlight is it provides heaps of great tools to use, so people like me who are completely graphically minded and a little bit developer stupid are still able to create sweet menus and the like.

This blog will show a simple way to create a menu that has all the main categories visible and when clicked will show your child links for that category, and when clicked again will make them disappear.